March 4, 2013 – Brooklyn's Arthur Ashin had been lying low while his Autre Ne Veut alter-ego was out garnering buzz as the latest alt-R&B lothario to the scene. But dude's identity has since been revealed — he's a master's candidate in psychology, natch — and there's no sense in hiding anymore. The singer doesn't bother obscuring his face in the video for "Play By Play." In fact, he uses that stubbly mug to convey all kinds of emotion (via '90s boy band earnestness) as he coos inside of the most awkward karaoke room we've yet to enter. For a single, this track is the right choice.

March 4, 2013 – When Mark Arm spoke to SPIN in December, he explained a key development in his process leading up to Mudhoney's ninth album, Vanishing Point. "The older I get, the pickier and more conscious I become about what I'm singing. We definitely wear our influences on our sleeves, but hopefully, we're finding an original way to say something, even if it's been said so many times before. It's not always possible, but that's what I beat myself up over the most." But Arm can give his, um, arm a rest from further writing (for now) and further beatings (for good). With the new album due out April 2 via Sub Pop, the first single has emerged and it's a perfect example of what the Northwestern garage-punk O.G. was talking about. "I Like It Small" is a genuine anthem to the indie lifestyle: "I'm good with Gladys sans the Pips," he growls at one point.

March 4, 2013 – Speculation over M.I.A.'s forthcoming album Matangi has been bubbling for nearly a year. Her 2010 output — the excellent Vicki Leekx mixtape and the divisive Maya — left a lot of us wondering where the bird-flipping star would head next, and we've been following the breadcrumbs faithfully since. There was the unexplained "Come Walk With Me" video, and that 20-second Twitter clip, plus SPIN's own talk with Ms. Arulpragasam about her new music.M.I.A. also explained publicly that Matangi is "a fuck you" to all who've burned her over the past few years, and then that the album was actually inspired by finding "spirituality through the Internet," so at a certain point, the songs are just gonna have to speak for their own damn selves. Thankfully, that's actually happening. On Sunday morning, M.I.A.

March 4, 2013 – "I never ever watch the news because I'm depressed enough," Morrissey said, then paused in front of a sold-out crowd at Los Angeles' Staples Center arena on Friday night. "But I was very sad to hear that the rhino is nearly extinct. And it's not because of global warming or a shrinking habitat. It's because of Beyoncé's handbags. God bless the rhino."What came next was a blast of dark clanging and foul noise as Moz and his instrumental hit-men performed the Smiths' 1984 vegetarian war cry, "Meat Is Murder." Above, awful footage of abuses at factory farms was projected into a huge screen. The band ramped up the skronk for the most dramatic images and the result was terribly effective. Before the song ended, Morrissey squeezed in another jab: "KFC is murder"Bey and the Colonel weren't surprising targets of the Englishman's ire, but they seemed like the wrong ones.

March 1, 2013 – An entire county's worth of schools were put on secure lockdown yesterday in Pennsylvania when a eye doctor's receptionist misheard the lyrics to the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. This actually happened. As the Beaver County Times reports, 19-year-old Travis Clawson had an appointment with his optometrist scheduled for the afternoon, but when the office called he failed to pick up. His voicemail, however, said plenty.Clawson couldn't come to the phone because he was "all shooting some b-ball outside of the school." Pop-culture participants and aficionados of corny '90s rap music would of course recognize that as a line from the aforementioned made-for-TV DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince collabo.

March 1, 2013 – Well, this was an inevitability as Baauer's "Harlem Shake" slowly worms its way into the very fabric of the universe. As a side effect of the dance craze going viral, the New York producer accidentally contributed to the gentrification of an emerging genre before scoring a No. 1 placement (two weeks running) on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. The track also got a high-schooler arrested, inspired peaceful revolution in Egypt, and gave Azealia Banks yet another opportunity to explore her deep thoughts about homophobic slurs.

March 1, 2013 – When we first heard Buke and Gase's "General Dome," we frankly found it terrifying. But we had no idea. The incredibly tense paranoia-inducer has now been set to video footage that only increases those traits. J.D. Molero directs, drenching what appears to be a vintage anti-drug PSA in digital distortion. All of the terrible convulsing, inexplicable cobras, and creepy old ladies in the original footage appear infinitely more worrisome when turned into smeary visions of minute hyper-colored squares. Had this guy, and this song, been around whenever the cautionary clip was made, there's a good chance casual drug use would be a thing of the very distant past. "General Dome," of course, hails from Buke and Gase's recently released album General Dome, which SPIN's Jessica Hopper described as "revving, unafraid, and loud." And did we mention it's kinda scary? Right. Well, it is.

March 1, 2013 – SPIN cover stars Tegan and Sara were aiming high when they crafted their freshly released seventh album, Heartthrob, even if some of the songs' influences came from serious emotional lows. The Quin sisters have just released a lyric video for one such standout, which our reviewer Jon Young described quite aptly: "For flaming, deranged drama, however, there's no topping 'Now I'm All Messed Up,' a masterpiece of controlled tension that starts slowly with morose observations like, 'Why won't you just comfort me?' before erupting into full-blast melodrama, with tortured voices exclaiming, 'Go / Please stay!' in a furious tug-of-war." Which is why a lyric video for this song is more than warranted (and perhaps less disconcerting than watching two of our favorite chart-climbing artists go utterly mad on camera).

March 1, 2013 – Total Control may be from Australia, but the post-punk posse are capable of an almost Nordic sense of pacing and breadth. While other outpourings from the Melbourne band have ranged from fast-paced hardcore to fuzzed-out minimal techno, the song "Sweaty" is as grand as a glacier, beginning with a pensive swarm of humming guitar notes as main man Dan Stewart drawls out cryptic poetry about hunger, souls, and crank. We believe him when he claims the latter "ain't in [his] veins" — this is a slowly moving masterpiece that soon turns into a grinding squall of wasteland ambience. Though the video above offers a series of disconnected clips, it well captures the song's bleak feel. "Sweaty" appears on Total Control's 2012 split with Thee Oh Sees — the former's half of the thing is streaming on Bandcamp, and it's worth your time. The Oz destroyers come to the U.S.

March 1, 2013 – Chillwavers have aged better than most progenitors of hashtaggable micro-genres, and Small Black are no exception. Their 2010 debut Small Chain was a little late to the sun-baked game, but rather than get hung up on that fact, the Brooklyn quartet ran an aggressive campaign of creative reinvention. They sampled Nicki Minaj. They got Das Racist's Heems to lay down a couple of verses. They made that pretty freaking radical Moon Killer mixtape. And then the dudes hit the studio, and while there, singer Josh Kolenik told SPIN he's done with "any sort of haze or crud ... We're going to live or die by our vocals and there's no sweeping it under the rug." Enter Limits of Desire, the group's official sophomore album, due May 14 on Jagjaguwar, and our first real taste of the thing: "Free at Dawn." Stream the song below to hear an effort that's both more minimal and more expansive.