December 12, 2012 – As goes the Widowspeak lore, singer Molly Hamilton was once so shy that she'd have to leave the room while the rest of the band listened to what she'd recorded. But 2011's self-titled debut for Captured Tracks was a brightly blooming affair, and the Brooklyn-based group's upcoming follow-up LP, Almanac, due January 22, finds Hamilton farther out in front of Widowspeak's beautifully ethereal dream fuzz. We heard the gleaming "Ballad of the Golden Hour" last month, and are now pleased to share "The Dark Hour," a tough but pretty grinder in the tradition of Warpaint or 2:54. While the atmosphere and drive leave nothing to be desired, it's all about the guitars on this one: the jangly acoustic, the lithe shredder, and those colorful little bursts of African highlife coming through.

December 12, 2012 – When he's not making soul-kissed house music as Les Sins or producing tracks for his bromance buddy Tyler, the Creator, Chaz Bundick has this little thing called Toro y Moi that happens to have a new album coming out on January 22. Anything in Return is shaping up to be another very solid installment in the chillwave innovator's excellent catalog (see 2011's Underneath the Pine). The first taste, single "So Many Details," arrived in October and, as our own Marc Hogan put it, Bundick is "confidently reclaiming — and refining, and advancing — the hazy, intimate-feeling electro-R&B sound that made the Toro y Moi name." We now have a video to go with that heartbroken track, and it finds our hero looking appropriately despondent despite the fact that he's surrounded with many of life's finer things. But the car, the countryside, the incredible home ...

December 12, 2012 – A year ago at this time, we were curling up by the fire to watch Toronto hardcore revisionists Fucked Up thrash their way through "Jingle Bells." Oh, and we were putting them on our cover to celebrate the fact that they made the Best Album of 2011 with David Comes to Life.

December 12, 2012 – This morning, after over a year of silence, revered Swedish electronicists the Knife shared an appropriately enigmatic teaser trailer for what fans could only assume was a new album. SPIN can confirm that there is indeed a new album on the way — it's due spring 2013, and will be called Shaking the Habitual, according to the group's label Mute. (Pitchfork reports the record will be out April 9 and the duo will tour Europe on yet-to-be-announced dates.) Also, last we checked, via Dazed Digital, Light Asylum's Shannon Funchess is set to appear on one song. Though at the time, she said the new record would be out September 2012.The Knife's members — brother and sister Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer — haven't been entirely inactive since their last studio album, 2006's intensely infuential Silent Shout (see: Purity Ring, Kate Boy, Sky Ferreira, et al.).

December 12, 2012 – Coming in at 75 songs and including such stinkers as Owl City's "When Can I See You Again?" (Wreck-It Ralph) and Holladay's "Never Had" (10 Years), the Oscars 2012 short list for "Best Original Song" isn't exactly the tidy thing one might hope for. Nevertheless, there are a handful of happy inclusions worth mentioning. Our favorite might just be "The Baddest Man Alive" by the Black Keys and RZA for The Man With the Iron Fists, but Fiona Apple's jagged This Is 40 contribution, "Dull Tool," offers tough competition.

December 12, 2012 – As Jessica Hopper explained in her review for Prince Rama's 2011 LP Trust Now, the Brooklyn-based psych-rock duo represent "the real sound of witch house, which is to say they sound like serious witches — impossibly high, fluttery voices singing mystic incantations over pulsing, six-minute jams that gun for another astral plane." They not only reach that hypnotic high with new song "So Destroyed," but cast their spell over a handful of fans who contribute their own trippy dance moves to the corresponding video. Member Nimai Larson edited together the clip using common folks' submissions, and the results are as varying in style and ability as one might expect. One woman dances with her cat. Another does cartwheels on the side wall of her room (see it to believe), other folks boogie on a rooftop, and one guy struts across a bar-top.

December 11, 2012 – There's never a dull moment on the just-out second solo LP from Big Boi, Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, and the same could be said for the life cycle of his Kelly Rowland collab, "Mama Told Me." First, it seemed as if Little Dragon's Yuki Nagano would be the guest. And then the former Destiny's Child star was confirmed for the spot. Next, we got to see the pair doing the song in a neon-dipped music video featuring a dancing pyramid with legs, and now we can watch Sir Lucious Left Foot and Miss Rowland perform their ebullient synth-popped Prince tribute on The View. Whew. While co-host Sherri Shepherd might have preferred an appearance from the Purple One himself, these two did a bang-up job bringing their song to life with assistance from a five-piece backing band and a whole lot of disorienting colorful projections.

December 11, 2012 – The Killers have at last released the sequel that we were never expecting to their 2005 "Mr. Brightside" video, in which singer Brandon Flowers, a dancer played by Izabella Miko, and a silver fox depicted by Eric Roberts wind up in a lopsided love triangle in the middle of a burlesque show. At the time, it seemed Flowers had lost his lithe-footed love and indeed, the new clip for Battle Born single "Miss Atomic Bomb" confirms that.The story begins with an older man in a desert-docked motorhome, eyeing a photo of a much younger ballerina. From there, we get an animated flashback that first prequels "Brightside," showing the Killers as a humble garage band and Flowers as a cool motorcycle bro taking the dancer on the ride of her life.

December 11, 2012 – SPIN's new Breaking Out stars FIDLAR have a thing for "digital graffiti" — which is to say, reappropriating whatever footage they find online as the often hilarious backdrop to their endless spate of pepped-up, thoroughly debauched anthems. While their last couple of videos were positively above board — see their hipster-skewering "Cheap Beer" and VHS-inspired "No Waves" clips — their just-out visual accompaniment for "Gimme Something" is a feat of copyright-infringing genius. Here, the band edits vintage footage of Creedence Clearwater Revival playing a concert so that the old school swamp-rockers look, quite convincingly, as if they're playing FIDLAR's song. The only explanation offered? "Our friend found this video of us playing a couple years back. Back when cocaine was good for you." FIDLAR, FTW.

December 11, 2012 – If you haven't yet heard El Perro Del Mar's "Walk On By," the Sade-channelling single from the Swedish singer's new album, Pale Fire, perhaps the above video for deeper cut "Hold Off the Dawn" will convince you to venture further. Filmed at a Stockholm studio, the blue-lit live session captures the projects yin and yang quite well: disco-kissed dance rhythms versus Sarah Assbring's melancholic vocal mood. While she's always sounded similar to Lykke Li, the El Perro singer has a more subtle approach, ever the calming counterpoint to her homegirl's manic intensity. Here, she's as cool as a cucumber, riding the driving drumbeat as she puts it plain to an out-of-scene lover: "Ain't no need to talk about the future, babe, we don't need to talk like that ... Let's stay awake to hold off the dawn." Sunlight is overrated anyhow.