July 6, 2012 – Just days after setting the internet alight with a Tumblr post that alluded to not being straight, ever-rising R&B sensation Frank Ocean has returned by leaking the next track off his mega-anticipated second album Channel Orange. "Sweet Life" is a collabo with his hero Pharrell Williams, and sounds like the lush pulse of early '80s Stevie Wonder siphoned through the first N.E.R.D. album. Hear it via his Tumblr.

July 5, 2012 – You may remember K-Pop chartbusters 2NE1 from our 20 Favorite Pop Albums of 2011 or logging two albums in our 21 Greatest K-Pop Songs of All Time or for being more famous than anything right now. Well yesterday they dropped their most recent single "I Love You" and it's a stone doozy, a perfect summation of pop's present and future: those Guetta-style soccer-riot synths glowing and pulsing, ghostly background vocals creating smoke around the neon, and a stuttering Ke$ha-gone-"Stay Fly" rap in English. It's already got 240,000 views by the time I write this, so join a cultural event and listen below: Don't miss "Seoul Trained," our journey into the Korean pop industry

July 2, 2012 – Taut, wound-up new-bruisers Hundred Visions come from contemporary Austin, but sound beamed straight outta 1979, connecting the line between the between the breezy American power pop of bands like the Shoes and the jagged Brit post-punkers of Gang of Four. They've got a seven-inch under their belt, logged some shows with White Denim and Archers of Loaf, and have an album on the way. But for now, dive into their new single, "Where Do I Sign?," which we can only assume is a sneering "Have a Cigar"-style rant from dudes who live right down the street from SXSW.

June 28, 2012 – "I feel like rap affects how I talk with people too much," says ever-rising New York stand-up Hannibal Buress on Animal Furnace, likely the comedy CD of the year. "I was talking with my mom on the phone and she was telling me, 'Hannibal, I'm watching your niece and nephew for a week while your sister is gone.' For a week, ma? Are they paying you? She said, 'No, Hannibal, a grandmother doesn't have to get paid to watch her grandkids.' "And I say, 'Yo, ma... money over everything.'" Buress' comedy is some of the best going, like Patrice O'Neal-styled observational incredulity delivered with a measured, Hedbergian flow. But obviously our favorite parts are his jokes about rappers, his punchlines about Odd Future and Young Jeezy and Lil Kim and the unnecessary "To Be Continued…" tags at the end of rap videos.

June 27, 2012 – This summer, the mighty Unsane and the equally mighty Melvins went on a massive 22-tour-date tour of destruction, mayhem and wiffleball. Supporting Unsane's sleek road-rasher Wreck and the Melvins' succinct Scion slab The Bulls & The Bees. the twin legends of '90s noise-metal traversed the country, sold 7"s covering each others songs, and did their best to make the world a little sludgier. The dudes in Unsane were kind enough to snap us a few photos along the way. Scrape along with us! Left: Marquee for the L.A.

June 23, 2012 – Hip-hop's first 20 years were built on decibels. A Bronx-bred arms race over speaker size, rocking without a band, "my JVC" vibrating the concrete, pumping up the volume, sampling "The Big Beat" and "Angel of Death" and Skull Snaps, and cars that go boom doing donuts on your manicured lawn while blasting the Aerosmith breaks stolen from the water-tower party.

June 19, 2012 – Andrew Bailey, guitar: I guess they sell rats to feed the snakes and shit, so they cost, like, eight bucks at Petco. I picked her up there. She would have been fed to a snake! It's fucked up: She's smarter than any fucking snake I can think of. She's the smartest pet I've ever had. You can train rats — it's crazy. She knows her name. I've trained her to do different types of tricks. We have games that we play where I'll throw a Ping-Pong ball across the room, and she'll bring it back — I guess it's like fetch. I trained her to eat the food that I don't eat. The cool thing about having rats is that you don't have to buy food for them; you just fuckin' give 'em your leftovers and they love that shit. My rat eats veggies and spaghetti. Her favorite game is when I'm falling asleep. She comes up by my face and bites my face.

June 19, 2012 – "As soon as volume exceeds 80 decibels, blood pressure rises," wrote jazz scribe Joachim-Ernst Berendt in 1983. "The stomach and intestine operate more slowly, the pupils become larger, and the skin gets paler…Unconsciously, we always react to noise like Stone Age beings. At that time, a loud noise almost always signified danger." In short, watching a loud band is a corporeal roller coaster — and some bold auteurs have decided they never want to get off. "Come on, you've been on these rides at theme parks, right?" asks Joey DeMaio, bassist and founder of peerlessly loud-and-proud power-metal institution Manowar. "People don't know if they're gonna make it to the end of it or die in the meantime, but it's a fucking thrill.

June 19, 2012 – Fresh off being named one of SPIN's 40 Best Albums of 2012... So Far and still streaming his whole album on our site, the mighty master of footwork DJ Rashad is back with a spacey music video for TEKLIFE Vol. 1 highlight "We Trippy Mane." In the clip, Rashad and Ghetto Teknitians cohort DJ Spinn go ham on some MPCs, the Don't Watch That crew gets into the action, and, yes, frantic footwork action happens all over the place! Best of all, the crew hangs out at Stonehenge, whose mystical properties may start explaining some of the superhuman dancing going on in here. Watch it!

June 19, 2012 – French death-thrash monolith Gojira have returned with their first album in four years and first for the mighty Roadrunner, L'Enfant Sauvage — presumably named after the Truffaut film, if you want some early indication of the art-fuckery that lies within. The perfect midpoint between Pantera and Neurosis, this thing is punishing and gloriously all over the place — opener "Explosia" mixes neck-snapping groove breakdowns with Morricone tumbleweeds; "Liquid Fire" has a windswept chorus emerging from robo-rock blurgle; and the breezy euphoria of "Planned Obsolescence" pretty much makes sense of that Meshuggah/Baroness double bill in four minutes flat. This has been peeling the wax off our office's ears for a hot minute. Stream the whole thing below, and grab a copy on its June 26 release day!