November 6, 2012 – "When you sing in a hardcore band," says Ex-Cult's Chris Shaw, "everything is very concrete because you have this idea you're trying to convey in a two-minute span. I wanted to get weirder than that and not go into writing a song already knowing exactly what I wanted to say, but rather, hear the music and then let whatever I was thinking about take over. The weirder the better."Shaw, who had also served in Memphis hardcore unit Vile Nation, found the perfect set of collaborators to achieve just that, combining with friends in the local punk scene (including members of Magic Kids) as well as cyclonic San Franciscan Ty Segall. In March, after a series of Ex-Cult shows at SXSW, Segall approached Shaw and his bandmates about producing their yet-to-be-recorded debut full-length on Memphis' Goner Records.

November 5, 2012 – This past weekend, Austin's seventh annual Fun Fun Fun Fest saw the once-modest, mid-autumn gathering finally metamorphose from off-season distraction to a festival-season staple capable of attracting more than just Ryan Gosling and a few local punks (and thanks to the Austin Music Office, SPIN was hanging in a sweet ATX Airstream). The headliners were heavyweights in their respective fields (Run-DMC, Refused), and the daily lineups (split between three specialized stages) were uniformly strong. There was both a taco cannon and a Black Lips set made zanier by contributions from Val Kilmer and Rooney Mara, the latter introduced by the former as Miley Cyrus. (Michael Fassbender acted as their chauffeur, carting them around backstage in a golf cart; he is a vocal Penguin Prison fan.) There was a nautical-themed skate and BMX ramp. Napalm Death were there.

November 5, 2012 – The Babies were born as a side project, a means for founding members Kevin Morby (Woods) and Cassie Ramone (Vivian Girls) to "trade song ideas and play house parties." But in the past two years, the Brooklyn duo has seen the group bloom into another formidable, full-time band. Next week, they will release Our House on the Hill, their second full-length and first to feature bassist Brian Schleyer. It's a record they recorded away from home, over two weeks in Los Angeles with producer Rob Barbato (the Fall, Cass McCombs, Darker My Love), and without question their most varied and engrossing outing to date. Hear it in full below.

October 29, 2012 – "It's always a little threatening to take on material I consider perfect as is," says Thee Oh Sees frontman John Dwyer. "The only rule being, don't fuck it up." But in covering the Velvet Underground's "European Son," the "perfect material" in question, Dwyer and his San Francisco garage-punk crew never came close to fucking anything up at all — their faithful contribution to the forthcoming, Castle Face-helmed tribute Velvet Underground & Nico is every bit as volatile as the original. "I thought it was a great closer for that album," he says of the song, coda to the legendary New York outfit's 1967 debut LP. "I figured I could ride the noise-wave pretty far on that particular tune." He definitely does. Hear it for the first time below.

October 29, 2012 – Though the Pharmacy call Seattle their hometown, the power-punk threesome spent much of the past year living and writing their latest album Stoned & Alone in New Orleans. It's an effort that finds them stepping outside of their beery comfort zone, experimenting with strings and fleshing out songs (many of which were recorded back in Seattle at Jack Endino's Soundhouse studios using the same Fender amp Kurt Cobain did on 1989's Bleach) to lengths they hadn't yet before. Below hear weightless highlight "Make Me Remember," a song with a coda that's tough to forget.

October 25, 2012 – Originally the solo recording project of Brian Kelly, in recent years So Cow have blossomed into both fully functioning three-piece and card-carrying members of Popical Island, a DIY pop collective in Dublin, Ireland. (They actually call Galway home, two hours west on the North Atlantic.) They've teamed up with their fellow Irishmen (and CMJ 2012 survivors) in Squarehead to release a split EP due to include "I Hardly Know You," a jouncy, heart-bending power-pop number you can hear for the first time below.

October 25, 2012 – A month ago, we posted footage of festival king Gary Clark Jr. performing "Numb" at Wille Nelson's studio in Spicewood, Texas, just outside his hometown of Austin. That song was a cut from his then-forthcoming debut full-length, Blak and Blu, out last week via Warner Bros. Below, watch Clark Jr. unfurl another, "Third Stone From The Sun / If You Love Me Like You Say," a nearly ten-minute guitar-meditation cover of tracks by Jimi Hendrix and Little Johnny Taylor. And as he recently told us, this is the short version:"At first I was like, 'Leave it as the 20-minute version,'" he recalls of one discussion with producer Mike Elizondo. "I've been playing it that long for about eight years. But he did some really cool cuts. I realized I am one of those artists where I lose sense of time when it comes to record-making. You can't do a 20-minute version on a record."

October 24, 2012 – Who: Though METZ now make Toronto their home, their noisy, radial saw-like punk barrage has firm roots in Ottawa. "I sometimes refer to it as the [Washington] D.C. of the north," says singer-guitarist Alex Edkins of his nation's capital and the DIY culture that it has incubated. "It's a government city, so most people work for the government, but there's not so much happening. So what do you do? You start a band." More than boredom, though, it was the Dischord-inspired, "slightly less political" hardcore scene that Edkins and drummer Hayden Menzies, both 30, came of age in during the '90s that shaped their trio's uncompromising sound and live show. Although it took awhile for METZ to emerge, Edkins hesitates to discuss his first few bands.

October 22, 2012 – This past July, SPIN's Christopher R. Weingarten deemed Indian Handcrafts' "Bruce Lee" a "prog-glurp masterwork" that could "give chills to fans of Maggot Brain-era Funkadelic and Big Biz alike." He was correct. That song, though, is just one of several exceptionally sludgy gems to be found and heard on the Canadian duo's Sargent House debut, Civil Disobedience For Losers, a ferocious full-length unveiling recorded with Melvins drummers Dale Crover and Coady Willis as well as their longtime producer Toshi Kasai. Hear it in its entirety for the first time below.

October 16, 2012 – The conversation stops as a guy on roller skates glides across this intersection in San Francisco’s Mission District, just beyond Ty Segall's dented SUV. He's in tight black shorts and a black Dixie Cup sailor hat, proudly displaying a message hand-painted across his sleeveless sweatshirt: "Mitt Romney Is A Douche." Segall and I repeat the phrase simultaneously inside the car, as the man vanishes into a corner store."That fuckin' rules," Segall says. "It's comforting to live in a place where you can do whatever the hell you want and no one gives a shit, where no one's judging." He's beaming now.