April 30, 2013 – Ever since SPIN dropped our own Hottest MCs in the Game list, Chance the Rapper has been going out of his way to prove us right about his placement therein. As the striking Chicago talent gears up for the release of his Acid Rap mixtape — out today (April 30) — he's shared the playfully swaggering "Juice" and the John Legend-featuring "Good Ass Intro," not to mention "NaNa," the video for which found the young rapper and comedian Hannibal Buress hilariously spending their $5,000 budget on random crap in Los Angeles.

April 30, 2013 – In February, trip-hop godfather Tricky pleased a lot of fans when he announced a) that he's not feeling his last album either, and b) that he's got a new one on the way called False Idols. So far, all evidence seems to point to the Knowle West boy's professed improvement being a very real thing. "Nothing's Changed" is as emotive and gloom-swole as his '90s output, and "Does It" was delightfully even darker. Now we've got two new tracks to consider. The otherwise unsung singer from those first leaks, Francesca Belmonte, returns for today's "Tribal Drums," which combines primitive percussion, chopped melodies, and soothing coo to create a mood that wouldn't be out of place on a How to Destroy Angels release. Stream that one below, and download it via Tricky's Facebook profile.

April 29, 2013 – Back in 2012, Flying Lotus teased the impending arrival of his gorgeously surreal album Until the Quiet Comes with a similarly blessed short film directed by Kahlil Joseph.

April 29, 2013 – Usually Amanda Palmer is content to crowd-source attention from the nameless, faceless masses, but now she's got her sights set on one of her heroes: Morrissey. In an open letter to Moz published by Slate, Queen Look-At-Me offers King Woe-Is-Me nearly 3,000 words' worth of advice encouraging him to free himself from the "agony" of traditional record-releasing by embracing her proven (and much-debated) Kickstarter model.Palmer begins by ingratiating herself to the legend ("How dare you have such power over me?") and then explains that she read of his recent tour cancellation, health woes, and admission that he can't find a proper record label for his next album (via the Guardian).

April 29, 2013 – Over the last couple of years, the magical Jeff Mangum emerged from the ether to play a handful of shows including Coachella 2012, where he granted the crowd some sweet succor by playing a handful of highlights from 1998's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. That classic album was, of course, credited to the project that gave the man a name: Neutral Milk Hotel, which sadly disbanded shortly after that set's release.Now, as an update to the band's website confirms, NMH are reuniting to play five shows here and abroad with more dates to be announced.

April 29, 2013 – Mikal Cronin trades in a near-perfect combination of garage rock and power-pop. If new songs "Weight" and "Shout It Out" didn't make that abundantly clear, the San Francisco player's new album MCII should do the job. The entire thing is streaming right now over at NPR, and it's everything we'd hoped for from this Ty Segall collaborator and recent SPIN Breaking Out star.Back in January, Cronin spoke to our own David Bevan about the new album's instrumental duality: "I definitely see what the distortion pedal is capable of now. That comes out [on this record] here and there, but I've been listening to a lot of music lately almost purely to listen to arrangements. I wrote some string parts for this record, which was new for me."Similarly, in our write-up of Cronin's clutch SXSW performance, David Marchese wrote, "You can't get too comfortable during a Mikal Cronin song ...

April 29, 2013 – After much speculation resulting, code-cracking and an epic game of multimedia cat-and-mouse, the truth has at last been revealed: Boards of Canada are releasing a brand new album called Tomorrow's Harvest on June 11 via Warp Records (pre-order here). This will be the Scottish electronic duo's first LP since 2005's The Campfire Headphase. The album's cover and track list are below.The mystery began on April 20, Record Store Day, when a fan discovered a new, unannounced Boards of Canada 12-inch at a New York record store. The artwork contained a mysterious sequence of symbols ("------ / ------ / ------ / XXXXXX / ------ / ------") and the vinyl itself played static, a bit of music, and a robotic voice reading six digits.

April 29, 2013 – The brand new Iggy and the Stooges record is called Ready to Die, but fear not: Mr. Pop's fortune has been told and he'll be living unto the ripe old age of 92. Of course, we're not surprised. The 66-year-old's shirtless bod made our list of the 50 Best Things We Saw at SXSW 2013 — to the layman's eyes, he looks downright indestructible (maybe it has something to do with that "hot pepper sauce" in his infamous tour rider). But that doesn't mean that this protopunk icon doesn't have other concerns.In the clip above he consults a fortune-teller, a voodoo practitioner, and a tarot reader in order to get the skinny on his new album's success.

April 29, 2013 – You may have thought you didn't need to hear yet another version of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," but that was before you realized what English trio Daughter could do with the song. Last week's shares included nine great Internet remixes of the track, a chiptune reinvention for you Nintendo nostalgists out there, and a bubbly, soulful rendition by Dutch reggae posse Postmen. But London's Elena Tonra and her bandmates change the entire mood of the disco-powered single in their BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge cover. Daughter imbue the original with a little bit of the xx's dark magic and their own taut minimalism. Pharrell's words about staying up all night transform from celebratory to disconcerting — the stuff of the Weeknd's bleak binging music.

April 27, 2013 – Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has made his name screeching and shredding in black metal outfit Liturgy, but he's got a softer side, too, evidenced by his a cappella cover of Shellac's incredibly bitter "Prayer to God" for the A.V. Club. Okay, so it's a slightly softer side, but we'll take it. Especially when "it" comes in the form of Survival, the more prog-inclined band that Hunt-Hendrix now fronts.Rounded out by guitarist Jeff Bobula and drummer Greg Smith, the trio will release their self-titled debut on Thrill Jockey May 14. According to the label, we should avoid that pesky desire to compare projects.