February 2, 2010 – Welcome to the new weekly SPIN.com feature "Name That Band" in which we get the inside stories behind the mysterious monikers of some of our favorite artists. (See previous stories in the series.) This week: Lightspeed Champion. Texas-born, England-raised Devonte Hyne used to front the lauded UK dance-punks Test Icicles before hooking up with Monsters of Folk/Saddle Creek records honcho Mike Mogis and trading in disco beats for gorgeously orchestrated folk rock under the name Lightspeed Champion. Due February 15, his winsome Life Is Sweet! Nice to Meet You! finds the man once dubbed by the NME as one of the "20 Coolest" in rock avoiding any hint of a sophomore slump. Why Lightspeed Champion? "Originally I used the name Lightspeed Champion for a character in a comic that I drew in high school. He was a hero who solved math equations.

January 28, 2010 – Why isn't 2009's freakiest breakout star nominated as a best new artist? Who decides whether or not an album is "Americana" or "Contemporary Folk?" How the heck are Hall & Oates nominated in the same category as MGMT? To help answer these, and other Grammy-nom related questions, we turned to Bill Freimuth, the Recording Academy's Vice President of Awards. The first question is an obvious one: Lady Gaga was the biggest new star of 2009. Why isn't she one of the nominees for Best New Artist? One of the rules for the Best New Artist category is that this is supposed to be the first year that an artist comes to prominence. Lady Gaga was nominated for a Grammy last year ["Just Dance," Best Dance Recording], and that, as far as we're concerned, signifies prominence.

January 27, 2010 – Lamb of God had a killer year in 2009. Wrath, the Richmond, Virginia, band's sixth album, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 when it was released last February, a triumph the quintet consolidated with a long run as the opening act on Metallica's tour. Then, in December, came the news that the group was nominated for a Best Metal Performance Grammy for the furious Wrath track "Set to Fail." (The band had been nominated once before, in 2007.) "It's been a phenomenal twelve months for us," says drummer Chris Adler, speaking on the phone from Richmond. "I kept waiting for the bubble to burst, but it never did." How are you feeling about your chances for a Grammy? You're up against some pretty big names -- Slayer, Judas Priest, Megadeth, and Ministry. Yeah, we were as surprised as anyone that we got nominated.

January 25, 2010 – Welcome to the new weekly SPIN.com feature "Name That Band" in which we get the inside stories behind the mysterious monikers of some of our favorite artists. This week: Scottish indie-rockers Frightened Rabbit. Why Frightened Rabbit?: "When I first started playing," says singer-guitarist Scott Hutchison, "I was a solo act and, unfortunately, Scott Hutchison is not a catchy band name at all. I thought of Frightened Rabbit because it was a nickname given to me by my mum when I was younger. I was incredibly shy as a child, almost chronically so. My parents would take me to their friends' houses and I'd be expected to play with their kids -- I guess the idea was to socialize me -- but I had no interest. These kids weren't my friends. Why did I have to play with them? I'd end up just sitting silently by myself. So out of that, my mum called me her frightened rabbit.

January 24, 2010 – It's all well and good to give out awards and watch performers thank everyone who ever really, truly believed in them when nobody else did, but the most exciting thing about the Grammy telecast is undoubtedly the performances. Remember Soy Bomb crashing Bob Dylan's party? How about Eminem's emotional duet with Elton John?

January 20, 2010 – Welcome to the new weekly SPIN.com feature "Name That Band!" in which we get the inside stories behind the the mysterious monikers of some of our favorite artists. This week: Veteran Philly jam masters THE DISCO BISCUITS. Why "The Disco Biscuits"?: "I've never told anyone the real story before," says band leader and bassist Marc Brownstein, "but I think after fourteen years, it's time to reveal the truth. So here it goes: When the band started out we were all students at Penn, and we had this idea that we'd change our name constantly. We'd be called one thing one night, then another thing the next night. Somehow the idea caught on. Everyone on campus knew who we were.

January 19, 2010 – Citing burnout, guitarist Dave Keuning recently told the Australian Associated Press that the Killer's gig at the Good Vibrations festival in Sydney, Australia, on February 13 would likely be the superstar quartet's "last shows for a while." When asked if the break was permanent, Keuning replied, "not as far as I know." "It's like people expect us to [tour and record] non-stop till we die," continued the curly-haired axe-man, "but we just want a little bit of time off, just to be myself and do what I want to do for a little bit." Brandon Flowers and Co.

January 12, 2010 – 2010 is shaping up to be a year to remember for Courtney Love. Come the spring, her band Hole plan to release Nobody's Daughter, their first album in twelve years. Before then, the reconstituted rockers will play their first concerts in a decade. And now? Fresh ink. On Monday, Love posted pics of her new tattoos -- a series of identical small flowers all over her upper body -- see them here, here, here, and here. You might want to make sure no one's watching over your shoulder if you check out the above links, though, because in addition to shots of the singer dressed in a black bra showing off her newly decorated celebrity skin, there are two topless pics wherein Ms. Love shows off a sideboob tattoo.

January 12, 2010 – Turns out Alice likes her pop-punk. Recently, news broke that Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz and blink-182 bassist -- and SPIN.com columnist -- Mark Hoppus were working on an original track for the Tim Burton-Walt Disney cinematic re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, due in theaters March 5. Now we know who'll visit them at the tea party: The full track-listing for the soundtrack, dubbed Almost Alice and out March 2, was announced today on MySpace. Joining Wentz and Hoppus, whose collabo is called "In Transit," are fellow pop-punk stars like Avril Lavigne ("Alice [Underground]"), Tokio Hotel and Kerli ("Strange"), The All-American Rejects ("Poison"), and Plain White T's ("Welcome to Mystery"), among others.

January 12, 2010 – Five years after the L.A.-by-way-of-Chicago quartet's tart, catchy Oh No found success on the strength of the charmingly low-budget, treadmill video they filmed to accompany the punkish single "Here It Goes Again," OK Go is back with the decidedly Prince-ly Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, out Jan 12. "I'd always been a fan of Prince's," says frontman Damian Kulash, speaking on the phone from L.A. "Something about his voice and songs touches me in a profound way -- and this time around his music made it from my life into the band's music." Kulash has a lot of practice letting people into his life -- the band's Twitter following is over 300,000 strong. So in addition to answering our questions about the new album, he took the time to respond to questions sent to SPIN via Twitter. The new album has a very different, more layered sound than your first two. What prompted the change?