May 17, 2013 – In the 26 years that Primal Scream have been actively releasing full-length records, they've traversed tremendous ground. From the bleary house-indebted psychedelia that populated early efforts (namely their landmark 1991 album Screamadelica) to the more straightforward rock records they've made in recent years, Bobby Gillespie and guitarist Andrew Innes — as well as a rotating cast of others — have subscribed to the philosophy of Spacemen 3: That is to say, they've taken a lot of drugs to make music to take drugs to.

May 9, 2013 – It's tempting to view Vår as nothing more than a castoff side project. It almost seems as if Elias Bender Rønnenfelt and Loke Rahbek (of Iceage and Sexdrome, respectively) meant for it to be that way. Two brief cassettes and two 7"s of blown-out synth pop for Rahbek's Posh Isolation label and Brooklyn's Sacred Bones make up the entirety of the Copenhagen project's recorded material to date, and all of it has been recorded straight to a four-track by Rønnenfelt and Rahbek in their Copenhagen practice spaces during lazy school days and, more recently, during breaks between their more well-known endeavors. But Vår's focus is on insular, personal sounds.

May 7, 2013 – Ten years ago Kieran Hebden was an introspective Londoner with a head full of seemingly disparate sonic threads: Free-jazz ecstasy, fragile folk, the sparse solemnity of ambient electronic music. On his third album, 2003's groundbreaking Rounds, Hebden, recording under the name Four Tet, cut up, stretched out, and weaved those sounds together into an awe-inspiring folktronica tapestry. The game-changing collection, which is being reissued (packaged with a live set from the era) by Domino on May 14, instantly found a place in the modern electronic-music canon, and won high-profile fans ranging from J Dilla to Thom Yorke.In advance of Rounds' next spin, Hebden, 35, spoke with us from his residence in upstate New York about the creation and reverberations of his still-influential masterpiece.It's been 10 years.

May 6, 2013 – Pure X had begun recording Crawling Up the Stairs, their sophomore full-length, before their beloved 2011 debut, Pleasure, had even made it to shelves. But just because the Austin outfit gave themselves a lot of time doesn't mean the LP came without its share of turmoil. As principal songwriters Nate Grace and Jesse Jenkins tell it, Crawling Up the Stairs traces the arc of a personal descent into hell and the slow climb back out of it — a storyline no doubt inspired by a couple of breakups and a skateboarding tumble that gave Grace a gruesome knee injury that left him on crutches for a large portion of last year. Grace and Jenkins, who recorded Crawling Up the Stairs with longtime drummer Austin Youngblood, talked to SPIN from a gas station in northern Texas about the loose, largely improvisational roots of the new album.

May 3, 2013 – In the nearly 17 years that comically prolific Ann Arbor, Michigan-based noise institution Wolf Eyes has been a concern for Nate Young, he's traversed some strange ground: two albums of languorous ooze for Sub Pop, a string of tour dates opening for Sonic Youth, a sludgy slot on Lollapalooza, and part of a SPIN trend piece back in the days when we were putting Franz Ferdinand on the cover. Though we're nearly 10 years removed from the project's critical heyday, Young has continued to plug away at the heart of the constantly evolving trio. Young's last several years have seen Wolf Eyes take a back seat in deference his similarly bleary Nate Young Regression project, but in February, the return of the trio was announced, with Jim Baljo taking over the reins in the guitarist slot from Mike Connelly.

May 2, 2013 – Yuck aren't scared. Despite the recent departure of one of their principal songwriters and lead vocalist, Daniel Blumberg, bassist Mariko Doi, drummer Jonny Rogoff, and guitarist (and new frontman) Max Bloom are in surprisingly good spirits. "Obviously it's a shame that things happened this way," explains Bloom of Blumberg's departure. "But I've been making this album for a really long time. Even before the first album was released I had big plans and ambitions for the second album."That's the prevailing sentiment in the studio during the recording of Yuck's forthcoming sophomore full-length, slated to arrive this fall. And though there's a feeling of disappointment surrounding Blumberg's decision to pursue his Hebronix project (with a first LP set for a July 9 release), there's also palpable excitement from Bloom, Rogoff, and Doi as they explain their next outing.

April 25, 2013 – Marina Diamandis, the Welsh-raised singer-songwriter behind Marina & the Diamonds, didn't start listening to music until her late teens. But you wouldn't be able to gather that fact from her 2012 sophomore album Electra Heart. Written by Diamandis, and featuring production work from producer A-listers such as Dr. Luke and Diplo, this record ditched her early new wave predilections for straightforward pop maximalism, shimmering keyboards and all. It doesn't sound like the product of someone who jumped into the game late, and by all indications she's making up for lost time.Diamandis, 27, took a moment during a recent radio promo tour (MATD are on tour in May) to talk to SPIN about some of her favorite things.Daniel Johnston"It's really interesting to me in terms of encouraging me to play shows and to start songwriting even though musically I was just on a really basic level.

April 23, 2013 – It's been a long, at times rough, road for the So So Glos since their 2007 debut. The Brooklyn punks cranked out a string of EPs before unraveling themselves from the constricting record contract that they signed when singer-bassist Alex Levine was only 19 years old.

April 18, 2013 – Though they share a name with a sunken, Atlantis-esque continent, the Buffalo punks that make up Lemuria didn't take long to find themselves. Beginning with their self-titled 7-inch debut, guitarist Sheena Ozzella and drummer Alex Kerns (who share vocal duties) crafted a particularly self-assured brand of post-hardcore, a sound that only grew more refined on their 2011 effort, Pebble, with the added production touch of Jawbox's J. Robbins.

April 15, 2013 – The Thermals' Hutch Harris had some small regrets. After 2010's Personal Life — a relatively stripped-down collection of mid-tempo tunes— he quickly realized that what he refers to as the album's "slower, cleaner, and more pretty" sound wasn't where the band's future lied. So he took action: The long-running Portland trio's latest effort, Desperate Ground (due out April 16 on Saddle Creek), finds Harris, bassist Kathy Foster, and drummer Westin Glass relishing in the more ferocious sound of early Thermals material.Harris called from his Rose City home to talk about J.R.R. Tolkien-influenced German power metal, hugely successful pop-punk, and other curious influences seeped onto the band's new album.Green Day"Kathy and I are from the Bay Area so Green Day were fucking heroes. No one should be surprised by that.