SPIN

May 30, 2012 – For reasons yet unknown, Brit pop darling Ellie Goulding recently decided to cover the Weeknd's particularly creepy (and perhaps best-known) House of Balloons cut, "High for This." The track — which was posted last night and produced by Chiddy Bang's Xaphoon Jones — has a more electronic aesthetic than the original, highlighting how insane its silky-smooth yet ultimately predatory lyrics sound when they're not being sung by a controversial, seductive mystery man like Abel Tesfaye. SPIN ranked two-thirds of the Weeknd's trilogy at No. 13 on our 50 Best Albums of 2011 list, so we're admittedly hooked by his nü-nihilism (and Ellie made our Best Pop Albums, too). But Goulding's pop-enhanced (and obviously quite deft) cover emphasizes its unsettling aspects. A tiny blonde woman pressuring a "boy" to sip codeine and have unprotected sex? Empowering? Ridiculous? Neither?

May 30, 2012 – First! John Mayer fans have totally forgiven him, apparently — not only for his years of being hate-able but also for his lack of performances leading up to the release of his fifth solo record Born and Raised due to a granuloma on his vocal cords. Despite relatively little promotion, the LP sold 219,000 copies per Nielsen SoundScan — almost three times what Adam Lambert managed at hit No. 1 last week — and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200. It's Mayer's third chart-topper. And for the record, he hit No. 27 on our list of rock's biggest punching bags. 2 Through 10: Adele and Carrie Underwood hold Nos. 2 and 3 respectively (with 21 and Blown Away). No. 4 belongs to Slash's Apocalyptic Love, which only sold 38,000, while One Direction bounce back to No. 5 (from No. 10 last week) with 37,000 copies of Up All Night. Lionel Richie's Tuskegee comes in at No.

May 30, 2012 – For whatever reason, the world simply can't get enough of darkly dystopian sci-fi epics, particularly ones that involve children. And who is M83 to deny the world what it desires? This morning, Anthony Gonzalez debuted his second collaboration with French directing duo Fleur & Manu for his band's "Reunion" video, which, it turns out, is the next installment of the epic escape a gang of extraordinary children began in his video for "Midnight City." At nearly five minutes long, part two of the saga continues the tradition begun in part one — it's basically Skrillex's "Bangarang" clip if the grown-ups were truly evil and the kids were from X-Men rather than Hook. Mutant GPS and Rogue-type exploitation included. Don't worry, though, there's a happy ending here (at least for now)... even if it does involve some kind of exorcism.

May 30, 2012 – If you watched the Billboard Music Awards two weekends ago, you might've been weirded out by Nelly Furtado's glow-in-the-dark, Native American rave-meets-Cirque du Soleil performance of her most recent single, "Big Hoops (Bigger the Better)." The single, a far cry from "Maneater" and basically the psychotic evil twin of "I'm Like a Bird," may be an ear-stabbing (pun intended) homage to over-large earrings, but as Furtado has now told MTV, her love of excess isn't the only thing the world should blame for the song's existence. "The state of mind I was in... I think I was listening to Odd Future or something, and I was inspired by how dark it sounded and how heavy and visceral and how it made your blood feel things," she said in the on-camera interview, below, after inferring that loving one's jewelry is a metaphor for loving oneself.

May 30, 2012 – After nearly half a century of paying very close attention to politics, Bob Dylan found politics paying very close attention to him (yet again) yesterday afternoon, when President Barack Obama awarded him and 12 others the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The medal is the highest honor an American civilian can receive. And the above photo of Obama gazing admiringly at Bobby Z in his shades at the White House is quite simply incredible. Joined by author Toni Morrison, astronaut John Glenn, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, among others, Dylan was honored for his "considerable influence on the civil rights movement of the 1960s and... significant impact on American culture over the past five decades," Obama said at the White House ceremony (via Rolling Stone). According to the U.S.

May 30, 2012 – Smashing Pumpkins might still have an uneasy relationship with technology, but for their latest album Oceania (due June 19 via EMI Label Services/Caroline Distribution), they're going whole-hog on a social media campaign that'll take place over the three weeks leading up to the LP's release. Fans are being asked to create and share artwork for each of the album's 13 songs. The photographs submitted as art will not only be up for a chance to appear on a limited-edition, band-signed "print-on-demand canvas poster" (via photography blog JPGMAG), the quartet might even retweet their favorites. The things frontman Billy Corgan does for you! Anyone can submit an image to the "Imagine Oceania" campaign by including the hashtag #SPOceania in their posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Deviantart (but whatever you do, not on MySpace, okay?).

May 29, 2012 – Last year SPIN hiked up to eastern Washington, where, on the crest of the state's Gorge Amphitheatre, the Sasquatch! Festival celebrated its tenth anniversary. The lineup for its eleventh this past weekend wasn't altogether too different from the other approximately two jillion hootenannies this summer, but 'Squatch has the advantage of being situated somewhere between "the wild blue yonder" and "just around the riverbend," which makes it perhaps America's most majestic fest — and, of course, worth the four- to five-hour drive from the nearest metropolitan area (depending on whether you're coming from Seattle or Portland) for a sold-out crowd of 25,000. Here's how the 2012 fest broke down: See our 30 best live photos from Sasquatch!

May 23, 2012 – Rumors have abounded over the past decade or so concerning the production of myriad documentaries surrounding '90s indie collective Elephant 6, the loose group of musicians whose members comprised Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo, Essex Green, Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and a handful of other acts in and near Athens, Georgia. But now there's something to show for the chatter: a four-minute trailer, drudged up by You Ain't No Picasso from a Louisville, Kentucky-based Vimeo account calling itself "No Def." Though the "rough" trailer was posted almost a year ago, it's only been viewed about 1,100 times (300 of those were just today).

May 23, 2012 – Beck is acting like an active musician this week: Last night he played a Sasquatch! warm-up show at Los Angeles' El Rey Theatre, and today he announced he'll be releasing a single via Jack White's über-inventive Third Man Records. The 7-inch, featuring the passive aggressively named A-side "I Just Started Hating Some People Today" (backed with "Blue Randy"), was recorded "while Beck was in Nashville working on new material for his long-awaited next album," per his reps. By the sound of the clips posted to the Third Man site, they are very, very Nashvillian. "Long-awaited next album" is right — Beck has been meandering a bit since his Danger Mouse-produced 2008 record, Modern Guilt.

May 23, 2012 – First! Adam Lambert's Trespassing tops this week's Billboard 200 albums chart with just a 77,000-copy debut, making the album not only the first No. 1 for Lambert (his major-label debut For Your Entertainment only got to No. 3, beat by Susan Boyle and Andrea Bocelli), but also the first solo album by an openly gay artist to top the ranking. It's also the lowest-selling No. 1 since the third week of August 2011, when Adele kept her throne with just 76,000. 2 Through 10: Adele's 21 is still up there at No. 2 (63,000), Carrie Underwood tumbles from her top spot to No. 3 (54,000), but Norah Jones climbs to No. 4 with 45,000 (though she sold 24 percent less than last week). No. 5 belongs to Tenacious D's Rize of the Fenix debut (44,000), a chart record for the buddies of Dave Grohl. Now 42 stays in the top 10 at No. 6 (42,000).