December 10, 2012 – When SPIN visited Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck in his Brooklyn studio last month, the Alabama-bred alt-country experimentalist explained of his new album that, "Several of these songs, I think, had to be produced in a strange way. Otherwise, they would have just fallen flat. They didn't seem like songs that could just be strummed on a guitar." Now we can hear the first taste of Phosphorescent's sixth LP, which Houck has dubbed Muchacho (due out March 2013 via Dead Oceans), and that beautiful strangeness is plenty evident."Song for Zula" is built around a swarm of strings and an upbeat electronic pulse, with Houck's lightly cracking voice smoothed over by thick whorls of synth. It's a major change from the full-band effort that was 2010's Here's to Taking it Easy and his 2009 Willie Nelson tribute To Willie.

December 10, 2012 – Christmas came early for '90s nostalgists and alternative rock radio fanatics over the weekend. Those who ventured out to the annual KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas in Los Angeles were given a rare gift on Saturday night. During Bush's set, the band vacated the stage while Gavin Rossdale went in on the guitar grind and gruff-guy vocals of their 1995 hit, "Glycerine." But after a minute, a second voice is heard: Gwen Stefani had been waiting in the wings, and came out to deliver a surprise duet with her husband. The fan-shot footage above isn't perfect, and the audio is at times overwhelmed with orgiastic screams, but the moment was sufficiently captured in all of its harmonically imperfect, ain't-they-cute glory all the way down to the kiss at the end. While the two-day concert was celebrating its 23rd installment, the couple of the hour had their own anniversary to honor.

December 10, 2012 – In Sunday night's episode of The Simpsons, "The Day The Earth Stood Cool," Homer went hipster after meeting a goateed food truck proprietor played by none other than Portlandia's Fred Armisen. Carrie Brownstein guested, too, alongside comic and sometimes SPIN editor Patton Oswalt, while, as the AV Club reports, "a cluster of grey clouds [brought] irony, retro chic, and organic farming from the Pacific Northwest" to Springfield.That chic zephyr also brought with it Oregon's own baroque-pop indie auteurs the Decemberists, hired to replace M.I.A. music teacher Dewey Largo.

December 10, 2012 – After a couple of years of minimal output, Thom Yorke's Atoms for Peace is suddenly the gift that keeps giving. Last week, we learned the details of their upcoming debut album, Amok, and then discovered that the band had hidden a choice Easter egg inside of the mural-like artwork found on their website. As it now turns out, that image actually does exist as a mural, and it moves just like the one on the web — well, more or less.Atoms for Peace visual master Stanley Donwood collaborated with UK "GIF-itti" artist INSA to create "Hollywood Doom," an installation in installments. INSA painted the Amok album art onto XL Recordings' Los Angeles office, and then repainted the moving bits a handful of times in order to bring the thing to life via time-lapse photography. The end result is a brick-and-mortar mural, which also exists as an awesome GIF.

December 10, 2012 – On her SPIN Essential'd new LP Master of My Make-Believe, Santigold "turns friction into fire" with "flippantly skewed pop anthems doubling as obviously personal documents of [her] unwillingness to let anyone get over on her." With new song "Girls," which happens to be written for the forthcoming soundtrack of the polarizing HBO show Girls, Santi White takes that creative blaze and channels it into a pair of lithely furious rap verses in which she reps hard for the fairer sex. Things kick off with a stack of looped vocals, then quickly get trappy with cut-up beatwork and a noisy drum kit. Girls — Volume 1: Music From The HBO Original Series is due January 8 via HBO/Fueled By Ramen, and it also features new ones from fun.

December 7, 2012 – If Bill O'Reilly had trouble understanding the appeal of PSY's beyond-viral hit "Gangnam Style," old Papa Bear's gonna have a helluva time with this one. Early Friday, a handful of headline-hungry outlets reported, some without context, that the South Korean megastar has a hidden "anti-American" past. While other outlets have since given some balance to the story, tempers flared online and someone created a since-removed petition on the White House website asking the president to rescind his invitation to have PSY over for Christmas. For his part, PSY has now issued a solemn apology, to MTV News, which you can read below.The outcry came from reports that the otherwise neighborly, horsey-dancing goofball participated in a pair of South Korean concerts protesting the large U.S. military presence in his country.

December 7, 2012 – She may not be the most famous Katy in music, but her approach to reinventing '90s-style R&B is about as impressively colorful as Miss Perry's fashion sense.

December 7, 2012 – Two years ago, LCD Soundsystem main brain and DFA Records co-founder James Murphy told SPIN that he was leaving his beloved band behind in part because, "There are other things I haven't been able to do because of it. Twice, I couldn't make an Arcade Fire record." As first world a problem as that is, we've hardly been alone in wondering what a collaboration between those epic-minded Canucks and this nu-disco genius would yield. At long last, Music Week confirms that we'll indeed get the chance to experience that blessed union.Facebook fan hub Arcade Fire Tube has excerpted a piece of the trade journal's print-only article on the band's manager Scott Rodger, who says: "They're in with James Murphy on three or so songs, plus Markus Dravs [Brian Eno, Björk, Coldplay, Mumford and Sons] who is a long-time collaborator. They write too many songs — that's a good problem to have.

December 7, 2012 – It's not always good to be the king — or the Bawse, as it were. Do a quick YouTube search for the words "Rick Ross in trouble," and you'll come up with a long line of well-viewed videos featuring scary dudes in bandanas, the Gangster Disciples, explaining that until Ricky Rozay cuts them a check, he'll be banned from playing their respective states: Illinois, Colorado, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina to start. Well, yesterday, with the GDs' death threats looming large, the Maybach Music Group CEO called off his Saturday night gig in Greensboro, North Carolina, reports the Charlotte Observer.So what actually happened here?It's easiest to think of the beef as a gangland copyright infringement case.

December 7, 2012 – New Orleans scream-cee and former No Limit barker Mystikal has had a rocky ride since he was released from jail nearly three years ago. After signing with his former rivals at Lil Wayne's Cash Money Records, he released the promising (if negligent) Weezy and Birdman team-up "Original," only to head back to lockup for three months after an unfortunate domestic abuse incident. Now, he rises back to the top of his game with the amazing James Brown tribute, "Hit Me," in which the man born Michael Lawrence Tyler reinvents himself as an old school band leader transported to modern times.