January 9, 2012 – That was quick: Jay-Z has already dropped a track featuring his one-day-old baby, Blue Ivy. Check out "Glory" featuring B.I.C. (that's Blue Ivy Carter) at Jay's Life + Times site and listen closely for those little gifted baby cries. Jay spouts all sorts of fatherly sentiment on the track, which is appropriate, because he's actually been showing off nuggets of parental philosophy for some time now. Sure, some of it was addressed to a baby boy, but the lessons still apply. Eat your heart out, Cosby. 1. "Meet the Parents" from The Blueprint 2: The Gift & the Curse (2002)Described in Hov's sort-of memoir Decoded as "a song about the gift and the curse that lies at the heart of the parent-child relationship," "Meet the Parents" shows that the man knows — as does any parent of a teenager — that children can be fickle.

January 6, 2012 – Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it. Swedish folkies First Aid Kit came to prominence a couple years back with their much-watched video for their gorgeous cover of Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song," which showed sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg ambling through the woods near their home outside Stockholm. The following album, 2010's The Big Black and Blue was a perfect match for the video's sweetly autumnal feeling. Guess what? That vibe is thankfully still in effect on the upcoming Mike Mogis-produced sophomore effort, The Lion's Roar, due out January 24. The Söderbergs just released a video for that album's shimmering, bittersweet single, "Emmylou," a homage to country-rock pioneers Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash and June Carter.

January 6, 2012 – Looking for a little speculative morbidity to lead you into the weekend? Well have we got the thing for you! The Live! I See Dead People Tumblr features a bunch of classic album covers altered so that the deceased members of the bands are no longer pictured. The results are kind of intense. Without Marc Bolan, the cover of T. Rex's Electric Warrior could be a downcast homage to the monolith from 2011: A Space Odyssey. Jeff Buckley's Grace cover is now just a shot of a lonely microphone. AC/DC's Highway to Hell — well, I gotta say that one looks pretty much the same without Bon Scott. But take a look at the rest. It's an oddly moving collection of images. Below are a few more of my, uh, favorites(?):Double Fantasy, John Lennon and Yoko Ono Return To the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, Ol' Dirty Bastard The Ramones, the Ramones

January 4, 2012 – After some false starts and misleading tweets, the Van Halen reunion becomes a reality on January 5, when the hard-rocking and legendarily harder-partying legends take the stage at Manhattan's Café Wha. (Check back on January 6 for a report from the show!) Presumably, the intimate set will be accompanied by a specific announcement about the band's 2012 tour and studio album. I can't wait! Eddie Van Halen's fingertapping guitar genius! Alex Van Halen's larger-than-average drum-set! Wolfgang Van Halen's last name! And, of course, my favorite part of the band's sound: Diamond David Lee Roth's gloriously hammy vocals. Hammy's the wrong word. DLR's not a ham. He's pork shoulder, belly, ribs, and loins topped with a heaping hunk of smoked guanciale. And Van Halen is where Roth's unctuous genius shines most brightly. And below you can hear it in its most unadorned state.

January 4, 2012 – Buzzfeed recently dug up a grainy 1994 segment ofMTV's 120 Minutes featuring guest host Thurston Moore interviewing an extremely awkward and baby-faced Beck back when the latter was on the cusp of "Loser" stardom. The slackadaisacal vocal tones! The ironic enthusiasm! The '90s were a magical time. Highlights: Moore mentions the "Loser" video: "You must be really happy that people are watching it and getting the Beck vibe," he says. In response, Beck pulls out a cassette player and plays a bunch of squeaky noises. Moore asks Beck if that's his real name.

January 3, 2012 – Looks like 2012 kicked off with a little luck of the Irish. The Belfast Telegraph reported the recent discovery "treasure trove" of up to 700 unreleased recordings by the massively underappreciated Dublin hard-rockers Thin Lizzy, whose flashy and poetic sound has won fans ranging from Smashing Pumpkins and Metallica to Mastodon and the Hold Steady. I've been waiting on a Lizzy revival for a while, so maybe this cache will finally make it happen. I sure hope so. Believe me when I say there's more to Thin Lizzy than the deathless "The Boys Are Back in Town." Frontman Phil Lynott, who died at age 36 in 1986, is one of the great pure rock stars (and a hilarious lyricist), and his band's catalog is full of uniquely gritty and soulful songs. Seven-hundred songs is a lot to dig through, though. So below are my picks for Thin Lizzy's ten best.

December 13, 2011 – With their needles-in-the-red 2010 debut, Treats, Sleigh Bells proved themselves capable of making a terrific noise. On their upcoming new album, Reign of Terror, due February 14 on Mom + Pop, the crunchingly melodic duo wanted to show they were capable of more. "[Reign of Terror] is me growing as a songwriter," says guitarist-producer Derek Miller, a few days after the album was finished being mixed. "With Treats it was less clear to me whether Sleigh Bells was going to be a guitar band or if we were going to do more sample-heavy stuff. With this record I had to pick sides. The beats are still important to me, but the guitar won." So did collaboration. The bulk of Treats was written by Miller before he began working with singer Alexis Krauss. This time around, she was able to help shape the songs. The result is the catchier, more melody-driven Reign.

December 2, 2011 – Sleigh Bells are back! The metal-guitar-meets-dance-pop Brooklyn duo announced the existence of their sophomore effort, Reign of Terror, in a trailer posted online early this morning at a new website, ReignOfTerror.tv. The clip is pretty oblique — it gives no release date yet for the album — but it does suggest that singer Alexis Krauss could have a fallback career as a Bond-film villainess. The main images are of Krauss looking icy cool as she slowly combs her hair in front of retro-Hollywood, lightbulb-framed vanity mirror while wearing an epaulet-adorned military jacket.

November 29, 2011 – We've already weighed in with our verdict about the Black Keys' new El Camino (we loved it!). Now, in advance of the album's December 6 release, you can hear a bunch more of the butt-kicking album's tracks for yourself. Enter your email address, country, and postal code at the El Camino website and you'll gain streaming access to five of the album's 11 tracks, including propulsive lead single "Lonely Boy" (of dancing dude video fame). Other tracks offered up include the crunching, slyly funky "Gold on the Ceiling," "Little Black Submarines," which moves from plaintive acoustic ditty to Sabbath-style stomp, the sinister "Sister," and slide-guitar driven "Run Right Back." Like the rest of El Camino, the teaser tracks are all supremely strong, immediately catchy stuff — the most straightforwardly satisfying music of the duo's career. Buckle up.

November 22, 2011 – Forget turkey and a short workweek, here's something to be thankful for: a new Leonard Cohen song! In advance of Old Ideas, the gravel-voiced singer-songwriter's first album of all-new material since 2004's Dear Heather, comes the starkly lovely new single "Show Me the Place." Over bittersweet violin, stately piano, and back-up-singer coos, Cohen, 77, asks in a beautifully grave vocal performance, to be shown "the place where you want your slave to go." A ghostly organ enters for a brief bridge, and the whole placid drama wraps up with the singer wanting to see "the place where the suffering began." It's not "Hallelujah," but it's not far off, and bodes well for the new disc, out January 31.