April 26, 2012 – Complete your Christian Mistress collection by copping this chugging instrumental coda to their swell Possession, an album we praised for its vintage metal choog with more muscular shredding. The band's Satanic bubblegum vibe fits into the fringes of the new metal poptimism that we praised in yesterday's Torche review, and this soaring little ditty rises like a sloppy, thrashy Phoenix from the ashes of seances past. Tack it on to your CD or MP3 copy (which you surely should have by now), as it makes an excelled two-minute exclamation point.

April 25, 2012 – Today the reunited Beach Boys released their first music with Brian Wilson on vocals since, as best as we can figure, 1989's "In My Car," a song so forgettable that we can't even find a YouTube to link to. The song is called "That's Why God Made the Radio" and there's no reason for it to exist and there's certainly no reason for it to be any good. There wasn't even really a reason for us to listen to it but we did. And it's not bad! The good news: There's no dubstep remix, there's no Foster the People guest harmonies, there's no Of Montreal bonus farts, there's nothing that even links it to the present. It's not called "That's Why God Made Spotify 2k12 Remix." The better news: It's not some fake vintage Explorer's Club/Daptone retromania thing either, recorded onto rotting tape into a mic with radio call signals on it.

April 25, 2012 – The yellowed, matted, sun-worn confetti stomped into the ground under Coachella's Sahara Tent indicates that, yes, someone had a good time here last week. And if you didn’t actually attend the first weekend of Coachella 2012, where David Guetta made it rain, it still could have felt like you were there. Despite desert-island rations of cellphone reception, 80,000 people provided no shortage of tweeting, Facebooking, and Tumblbragging. YouTube broadcast high-definition livestreams and archived performances, boasting 7.5 million views within a week.

April 20, 2012 – The black one is Calvin and the white one, appropriately, is Nurse. They told me Calvin was a boy, but he has really pronounced nipples. I don't know what that means. Calvin is incredibly affectionate; almost anybody can pick him up and carry him around and pet him — but if you're doing something other than petting him, he'll sit on your lap until you start. Nurse is almost the exact opposite: She has a negative expression on her face; it's unbelievably blank. She seems kind of like a really super-weird goth high school girl. I spend a huge amount of time alone and I work at home. So frequently they will be the only ambulatory earthlings I see until I finish with work and go out after midnight. If they weren't around, it would be somewhat like being under house arrest.

April 13, 2012 – Original gangster and legendary rhyme-ripper Ice-T has long been directing his upcoming production, Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap, the world's first documentary about the ins and outs about constructing uncut dopeness. The Iceberg is one of the greatest ever, beloved by everyone (except maybe Aimee Mann and her bowl of dicks), so the guest list is naturally formidable: Eminem, Kanye West, Dr. Dre, Nas, Snoop, Bun B, Chuck D, Run-DMC, Rakim, KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Keith... Oh, hell, just look at the poster, which promises every living legend outside of Jay-Z and Barney Rubble. Does Ice ever figure out how to write before "the pen yanks away and explodes and destroys the rhyme"? Watch the trailer for clues!

April 13, 2012 – Noise-rap eye-gougers Death Grips are brash, anarchic, punk-borne, distortion-splattered, puke-makingly noisy… and now they're labelmates with Shakira! A toxic waste accident of Rubin-ready loud-rap and no wave textures, Death Grips made a big enough splash with 2011's Ex-Military mixtape to get called up to the big leagues, signing with Epic Records — possibly the most unlikely major-label signing since outsider music pop genius Daniel Johnston inked with Atlantic almost 20 years ago. They've got two albums due in 2012, and the first, The Money Store (out April 24) proves that building with the guy who signed Usher wouldn't soften their edge one bit. The album is 13 balled fists of nicotine-fit drumming, wubbly bass bombs, molasses-thick reverb, and throat-shredding screams.

April 12, 2012 – Yesterday, bloggers were tittering after Courtney Love Tweet-ranted that Dave Grohl, her husband's ex-bandmate and the nicest guy in rock, had "hit on" her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. Dave's publicist denied it, Dave denied it, and the world pretty much refused to believe the guy in the "Big Me" video could be on some To Catch a Predator shit. Well, here comes Frances Bean Cobain herself to call bullshit. In a statement distributed to the press via the same firm that handles Grohl, she wrote: "While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn. I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy. Twitter should ban my mother." We sincerely hope Twitter does not ban Courtney Love, since music bloggers would then have to go back to writing about music.

April 11, 2012 – Veteran film director F. Gary Gray is in talks to direct the long-awaited N.W.A biopic due from New Line, Straight Outta Compton, and according to Hollywood Reporter, beat out John Singleton, George Tillman, and Elgin James. You may know Gray's work from big-budget, $100-million-grossing blockbusters like Law Abiding Citizen and The Italian Job, but we'll always know him as the guy who directed classic-among-classics Friday, still painfully unacknowledged by the National Film Registry. Is he the man for the job? Well, in his favor, the film is being co-produced by Ice Cube himself, who Gray has worked with extensively on Friday and the post-N.W.A classic "It Was a Good Day" music video. Gray has been up close and personal with N.W.A's Dr.

April 11, 2012 – Baltimore's Ed Schrader has built a wildman reputation for mixing shirtless, Mark Stewart-style post-punk free-association with completely unhinged tom-tom bashing — and, starkly, pretty much nothing else. For his first LP for the mighty Load Records, he adds a bass player, Devlin Rice, turning his one-man intervention to a two man loft-noise party. In a too-quick 20-minutes, Jazz Mind recalls Neurosis, Swans, Big Black, the Death Set and pretty much the the unfiltered, primordial joy of pounding on shit.

April 11, 2012 – What's black, white, and red all over? This morning, Lollapalooza officially announced their 2012 line-up, complete with the color-coded Crayola box daydream headliners of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Sabbath, Jack White, and the Black Keys (alas, Yellow Ostrich can only bring yellow sunshine on the undercard). We decided to be annoying dicks and ask Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell about his tri-chromatic visions and he was happy enough to patronize us with some snappy answers to our stupid questions.