May 17, 2013 – Beyoncé and Jay-Z are expecting their second child. So says E! News (and the entire Internet rumor mill), who claim to have confirmed the information via multiple trustworthy sources. The speculation ramped up earlier this month when Mrs. Knowles-Carter showed up to the "PUNK: Chaos to Couture Gala" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art wearing a custom Givenchy dress cinched high above her waist.Subsequent news that Queen Bey had canceled her May 14 show in Belgium due to doctor's orders (via dehydration, exhaustion) stoked the flames into a five-alarm building-burner. Although a source told People at the time that "Beyoncé and Jay are planning for another baby after her tour is over and things calm down just a bit," it seems Blue Ivy's supposedly forthcoming sibling has other plans.

May 17, 2013 – Gunplay's 601 & Snort was No. 10 on our Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2012 and one of the mixtape's finest moments is the stylish and introspective "Bible on the Dash." Perhaps in honor of the Miami rapper having recently cleared his name — as he promised he would — Gunplay has released a beautifully shot music video for that excellent track. The clip starts off with a goofy overlong sketch, but playful charisma is a huge part of the Maybach Music maniac's appeal. As are raw skill, smarts, and an ear for presentation, so when the man born Richard Morales Jr. reminisces about "when rappin' was a art," he's got the chops to do so.

May 17, 2013 – Last month we reported that Daft Punk had plans to debut their SPIN Essential Random Access Memories at a random ass town in Australia — Wee Waa to be exact, via the rural burg's annual agricultural festival. Well, although the album hit the Internet early, the event still happened and was a smashing success. As Pitchfork reports, while the town only has a population of roughly 2,000, the Wee Waa Show sold 4,000 tickets.Also, as seen in the video clips below, these Aussies got into it. Although there's no evidence to suggest the members of Daft Punk were anywhere near the place, the crowd went wild atop the LED-powered dance floor. In addition, there are reports (and video evidence) of Daft Pork Honey Sausages, Techno Treats, Random Access Rissoles, and Punk Pies being sold.

May 17, 2013 – Some days are better than others. You get up, look in the mirror, and realize you're at the top of your game — standing at your own personal apex. Or, as Mr. MFN eXquire and his cousin Goldie Glo might prefer to put it, "I woke up this morn' / Feelin' like that nigga." Together, with a beat assist by J5atron, these two are the "Illest Niggaz Breathin'" on the new track posted below. Punctuated by Mortal Kombat samples, the gritty head-knocker offers a sturdy home for eXquire's confident and gritty rhymes. Glo's raw, higher-pitched vocals make an apt complement. Apparently the song was originally intended for MFN's Passion & Power EP, but was held up due to sample clearance issues. Hit SoundCloud to hear remixes by Obey City, DJ Sicksents, and theMFK. For the freshest sounds from the New York MC, check out his two-part video, "Nightfall at the Thames."

May 17, 2013 – The magnificent Laura Marling doesn't even try on this cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark." She doesn't need to. Los Angeles singer-songwriter Eddie Berman kicks off his sleepy-eyed Sunday morning rendition of the 1984 heartland hit, and when he sings the line, "Hey there baby, I could use a little help," the inordinately talented young woman to his right cracks her mouth just enough to let a perfect harmony slip out. She barely raises her voice, barely moves at all, and yet absolutely sons everyone in the room. At one point, as she takes lead, she even poises her index finger against her lip as if she's thinking about something else entirely.What Marling supplies is so absolutely other that we can only assume she's beaming her presence in from some pure white cloud in the heavens. Or that she's horribly, terribly depressed.

May 17, 2013 – Sam Amidon puts his unique touch on the old Irish folk song "As I Roved Out" on his brand new album Bright Sunny South, but he reinvents it even further for the video above. Directed by John Hardwick (Blur, Arctic Monkeys, Dido), the clip begins with our host standing in the woods, reading from a piece of paper: "This song is about how you might be out on a cold winter's night ... maybe you'd bring a bottle of wine, head out into the woods, into the mountains 'cause maybe you're trying to find some sort of inspiration. You look around, but at a certain point as you get out there, the sun goes down and the shapes of the trees start to emerge." When the song begins, his banjo almost leaps into his hands, and the surreality kicks in.

May 17, 2013 – Chicago singer/producer Jeremih knows an impactful song when he hears one, but he may not know the entire reason for its impact. The R&B youngster has remixed the remix of Future's Lil Wayne-featuring "Karate Chop," but as Fader points out he didn't bother to edit out that part where Weezy turned a 14-year-old lynching victim into a punchline for a boast about his own sexual prowess and hence set off a string of events that resulted in the song being disavowed by Epic Records and Mounatin Dew dropping Wayne as a spokesperson. We're guessing that Jeremih somehow missed all of that — and that the Shlohmo collaborator isn't tacitly endorsing the controversial lyric — since his new verse on the track stays with the general theme of being super rich, super high, and super sexed.

May 16, 2013 – The-Dream isn't worried about radio play or foreplay. He's here to deliver an authentic love-making experience sans filler, frills, or other parties' preconceived notions of what such an experience should entail. The titular track of his forthcoming long-delayed album IV Play makes that more than clear — as did those collaborations with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Fabolous — and that might have something to do with his future status as Supreme Alpha Male, as seen in the new video above. The clip for "IV Play" finds Terius Nash wearing a variety of noteworthy hats and strange coats in a dusty, dystopian environment while a bevy of wasteland women court his attention.

May 16, 2013 – Hailing from Tempe, Arizona, Destruction Unit deal in their own sort of desert rock: ripping riffage, pounding drums, ominous atmosphere, damaged vocals. Just look at the waveform below for a preview of what's in store. This is thick, powerful rock'n'roll and it's the latest entry in the Suicide Squeeze Singles Series. The Seattle label has this far delivered a handful of heavy hitters — Numerators' "Dead," Audacity's "Finders Keepers" and the Coathangers' "Derek's Song" — in a limited vinyl run that's also set to include entries from Cloud Nothings and Antwon.D-Unit's "Sonic Pearl" doesn't break the mold in that it very well may break your speakers. The track will see a physical release on July 16 along with B-side "Nightfall," packaged as Two Strong Hits and pressed on glow-in-the-dark wax.

May 16, 2013 – Liars' excellent WIXIW found the Los Angeles noise-makers crafting an electronic album on their own beguiling terms, dwelling in the art form's more purgatorial nature, as critic Andy Beta noted. SPIN actually visited the hidden bunker where the trio recorded those songs and witnessed some of the odd experiments that gave the LP some of its unique sounds (we're still not sure about those osmotic books) and the video for the freshly released "I Saw You From the Lifeboat" acts as a window into that world.A series of images frenetically flies by as the band creates WIXIW, makes music videos, consorts with cats, shares cryptic diagrams, hangs with No Age, and ... well, you get the idea. It's pretty much everything that's happened since the album's opening moments were conceived, up to the clip for "The Exact Color of Doubt" that came out last month.