August 31, 2012 – Bristol duo Koan Sound is the latest bass cannonball fired from Skrillex's OWSLA label, and sure enough one of the funkiest things you'll hear this year outside of Mouse on tha Track or Antibalas. The grooves on their upcoming EP, The Adventures of Mr. Fox, are wide and lurching, obsessed with '80s exercise videos and retromaniacal drum sounds. Our favorite is "Eastern Thug," which has got the robot headbanger grooves of contemporaries like Skrillex and Kill The Noise, but with a distinctly '90s mosh pit feel — we're geeked on the piano lines straight outta Downward Spiral-era Nine Inch Nails and the sly build-ups of Prodigy's Music For the Jilted Generation. Gnarly!

August 29, 2012 – Yesterday, Gary Clark Jr. announced that he can boast something that Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, Skrillex, Drake and the rest of his Made In America festivalmates cannot — he gets to play both Saturday and Sunday. Gary Clark Jr.'s mix of Texas blues, sweltering hard rock, harder funk, and exploratory jammage could shake the moneymaker off of anyone. His virtuosic frenzy can follow Iron & Wine at Jazz Fest or precede Torche at Metallica's Orion with similar ease, which is why he's the king bee of the 2012 summer festival season. Clark explains how he earned SPIN's coveted Golden Corndog. Why am I on so many lineups? I'm honestly not sure. A lot of it has to do with my background: Austin, Texas, is kind of a nice little melting pot. Coachella, I was really excited to get to that one. The energy was just big.

August 28, 2012 – Liturgy, the sourpusses behind SPIN's favorite metal album of 2011, stopped by the offices of the Onion A/V Club to cover one of their favorite songs, Shellac's spiteful 2000 classic "Prayer to God" (one of SPIN's 33 Bitterest Songs Ever, natch). As witnessed at Metallica's Orion Festival, Liturgy has pared down from a burst-beating quartet to a two man guitarmy backed by an oppressively loud drum machine — maybe a Big Black song would have made more sense? Liturgy leader Hunter Hunt-Hendrix decided to take this one on alone, using nothing more than a microphone and his looptastic pedal chain. Watch this Reggie Watts-gone-Watain monstrosity below. The embedded video couldn't have said it better: "a delicious breakthrough in natural energy." OK, that line was technically in the Starbucks ad, but still.

August 21, 2012 – Noise-rock titans Lightning Bolt are finally returning after three years of silence with the Oblivion Hunter EP (out on September on Load, natch). The first taste, "King Candy," leaked today, and fans of the duo's particular breed of two-man bludgeonry (which includes Muse!) should rejoice. It might just be SoundCloud talking, but it sounds like the pair are reversing courses from a hot decade of slowly becoming more accessible and rock-centric, diving back into the blown-out, trance-inducing, lowest-fi recording of their 1999 debut. Check out the funkdafied, snare-tastic fireworks below!

August 21, 2012 – Australian drone seismologist Oren Ambarchi has been remarkably, Pollard-ically busy in 2012, releasing five(!) albums before summer's end — including collabos with Jim O'Rouke, Keiji Haino, Stephen O'Malley and Swedish jazzers Fire! Easily the best of the bunch (hell, one of the best avant-garde releases you'll hear all year) is his upcoming Sagittarian Domain (out August 29 via eMego) , a 33-minute black acid trance-out that rides a Neu!-matic groove into haunting, ghostly pits of oblivion. Usually known for sucking holes of pulseless drone, the now rhythmically energized Ambarchi uses a foggy half hour for his barely-there guitars to cross bubbling, boiling paths with the void-embracing gloom-pulse of Beak>, the endless boogie of Wooden Shjips, the colorful trips of Finnish kraut-rockers Siinai, and the post-metal currently washing up in Isis' wake.

August 21, 2012 – Bubbling up from witch house's crustiest cauldron come Crypts, a new project from ex-These Arms Are Snakes front-yelper Steve Snere. It's easy to compare it to contemporary chapel-haunters like Salem or darkwave revisionists like Cold Cave thanks to the booming 808s, syrupy Houston slow rides and googaze synths. But Snere's hardcore-fueled screeching of bloody murder makes this thing closer to "Stigmata"-era Ministry if it were shaking bloody paws with the creepier corners of 4AD. This is ultimately a punk record if Ian MacKaye was seeing purple instead of red. Don't believe us? Hear the blistering opebing track, "Completely Fucked" below, a two-minute tantrum of sultry "Moments in Love" synths meet a pile-up of gabber snares and rubbed-raw screams.

August 14, 2012 – Desert-bleached, spiritually minded, guitar-strangling superdupergroup Rangda — that's Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and spazz-jazz freaktopus Chris Corsano — have returned for another round of Eastern-infected, fuzz-blustering Cormac McCarthycore. After their knives-out psych-scuzz of their 2010 debut, the band has lassoed themselves into worlds more melodic (certain tracks have the loping gair of Up on the Sun Meat Puppets) and sensual (their freer sections are floatier and fluffier) on their second record Formerly Extinct, out September 18 via Drag City. The Nels-on-peyote, coyboy Meshuggah head-knock of "Majnun," is built on an infectious ostinato (it's two bars of 6 and one bar 10 for you nerds) that spirals heavenward into a sun-mugging cloud-shred breakdown. Get free!

August 14, 2012 – Atlanta MC 2 Chainz has logged more than 50 cameo appearances this calendar year alone. He's the guest everyone wants and, much like Cosmo Kramer, always manages to make a grand entrance — usually with his signature opening line: "2 Chaaaaaainz". His freek-a-leekanomics have defied all laws of supply and demand. In the run-up to his debut solo album, Based on a T.R.U. Story (out today!), the elastic-voiced star has blessed every imaginable rapper's single, mixtape, or YouTube leak: monster Nicki Minaj Billboard bangers, crossover-attempting Justin Bieber collabos, cred-building mixtape exercises with Rick Ross, Dat Piff-burning downloads with Don Trip, even some old-schooler hero worship with 8Ball.

August 13, 2012 – Norwegian psych-disco progtronica weirdos Mungolian Jetset are resurfacing for their fourth record, Mungodelics, a hearty, cohesive combo of remixes and not-really-remixes and hopelessly original music that drags their cheery dance music into danker basements. Meaner, gloomier and more infectious than ever, MJ has branched out into post-punk-fueled future funk ("Ghost in the Machine"), spacious night drives seeming powered by Detroit techno ("Smells Like Gasoline"), and, most beautifully, shimmering Reichian marimba circles that sounds like Music For 18 Musicians and Two Bass-Hungry Norwegians ("Toccata"). This thing drops on August 21 via Smalltown Supersound, but you can start the party early with our complete stream below!

August 13, 2012 – Remember when Death Grips canceled all their summer tour dates because they were "dropping out to complete our next album"? Well, they have announced that the album in question, NO LOVE DEEP WEB is done and, given the amount of pissed-off people after they went off the grid, it better be damn good. They sent Pitchfork a statement giving the album title, a vague release date, and confirmation of the collabo with Crispin Glover hinted at in this revealing SPIN Q&A from April. The statement is below: Assume all capitalization is [sic] and all drumming is to be presumed sick. the album is titled NO LOVE DEEP WEB we are working on 20 tracks and looking to narrow down to 13. it will be released by epic records in the us and columbia in the uk. the release is scheduled for fall 2012.