February 6, 2012 – Confused revolutionary? Brilliant provocateur? As her Super Bowl digit malfunction reminded everyone, Maya Arulpragasam is one of the most polarizing figures in pop today, a neon blur of contradictions and conflations — but she may also be the most thrilling. Here's a handy primer to her life and art and everything in between SPIN originally published in our August 2010 issue. By some accounts — including her own — we should all be done talking about Maya Arulpragasam. In 2007, promoting her sophomore album, Kala, the singer known as M.I.A. told an interviewer, "I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me. Part of me wants to carry on. Part of me wants to stop." Eight months later, onstage at Bonnaroo, she went even further: "This is my last show," she announced.

July 20, 2010 – Confused revolutionary? Brilliant provocateur? Maya Arulpragasam is the most polarizing figure in pop today, a neon blur of contradictions and conflations -- but she may also be the most thrilling. Here's a handy guide to her life and art and everything in between. [Full Magazine Story] By some accounts -- including her own -- we should all be done talking about Maya Arulpragasam. In 2007, promoting her sophomore album, Kala, the singer known as M.I.A. told an interviewer, "I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me. Part of me wants to carry on. Part of me wants to stop." Eight months later, onstage at Bonnaroo, she went even further: "This is my last show," she announced. Like many things she says, the statement posed more questions than it answered.

April 14, 2010 – March 1, 2010: It was the night the coolest band ever officially became rock stars. Not because the drummer snorted his weight in Peruvian lady or because the guitarist named the first daughter from his third marriage after his second yacht. Those are things a rock star does, but they aren't what make someone a rock star. You become a rock star when you can get onstage without adding anything new to your artistic legacy and still make thousands of people lose their minds. It's adulation as ritual, expectations met as a matter of course. It wasn't that Pavement came off like cynical Mötley Crüe/Eagles clock-punchers when they played the Auckland Town Hall in New Zealand for the first show of the year's reunion binge. Far from it.

July 17, 2009 – School's out. For. Wednesday. It's three o'clock on the kind of perfect spring day winter-hardened Chicagoans pray for as Jeff Tweedy's black minivan stops in front of a drab, stocky building, tailor-made to instill institutional heebie-jeebies. This used to be a Catholic school, but now it's a Montessori, all full of warmth and encouragement on the inside. Kids' art beams from the walls, engaged parents confer with passionate educators, bright-eyed tykes zigzag toward the idyllic afternoon waiting beyond the front doors. Tweedy, frontman of alterna-rockers Wilco, is every bit the alterna-parent -- he's wearing a gray button-down with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, dark jeans, and newish, blueish tennies.

November 8, 2004 – Jersey City sits across the Hudson River from Manhattan, both suburb and step-sister. Its nondescript expanse of industrial riverfront is significantly less dazzling than the island Oz next door-acres of parking lots and warehouses line the water's edge. Ted Leo loves New Jersey. He lives in nearby Bloomfield, plays Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" live, and has a patch bearing the name of his hometown stitched on the arm of his jean jacket. Even this desolate Jersey City spot has significance for him. In a way, Ted Leo was reborn here. "On 9/11, I came down to exactly where we are right now," he recalls as we approach the pier where ferries leave for Lower Manhattan. "For days, we loaded up boats to go over-medical supplies, dog food for rescue dogs.

September 28, 2004 – Various ArtistsRock Against Bush Vols. 1 & 2Fat Wreck Chords Last June, when Ronald Reagan finally moseyed off to that big ranch in the sky, I came across something former Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail had written about his halcyon days--and more specifically, about a 1983 anti-Gipper concert she attended on the state capitol steps in Olympia, Washington. "For me, this political idea of being punk and building community all started with 'Rock Against Reagan,'" she wrote of the show. "It might not have been the most articulate political analysis, but it was an important cultural moment.... I remember the bands at R.A.R. played on a flatbed truck." So let a thousand flatbeds roll. Teflon Ron left '80s punks screaming at a wall, their entreaties sticking to the mass culture like an anarchy tag spray-painted on the side of the Death Star.

September 22, 2004 – It's been almost 20 years since Dayton, Ohio fourth-grade teacher Robert Pollard began recording as Guided by Voices. "My parents and my ex-wife were telling me to get serious about my life," he recalls. "But I told them this was a hobby. Some people go fishing, we're doing this." Then his hobby became a career, and Pollard a beer-slugging indie-rock hero. As he prepared for the release of GBV's 16th and final album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, the 46-year-old Pollard walked us through his unique prog-punk past. THE BEATLES I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND (Capitol, 1964)"My dad bought me this record after I saw them on Ed Sullivan, and I played it incessantly. I couldn't believe there was actually a group of guys who could grow their hair long and just play this kind of music and have girls chase them around.

August 25, 2004 – Martina Topley-BirdAnythingPalmIt's been almost a decade since she backed Tricky on the still-classic Maxinquaye,and we never thought we'd endorse another trip-hop record, but thisforgotten torch singer melts the mic like Nancy Sinatra with a gun inher mouth, lending smoky, stalkerette intensity to heralt-rock-friendly R&B. The Good LifeAlbum of the YearSaddle CreekLike homies Bright Eyes andRilo Kiley, these proudly embittered longhairs write broken-downanthems of love and shame as sweeping and claustrophobic as theMidwestern sky.

August 1, 2004 – Shannon WrightOver the Sun(Quarterstick) Wright built her rep on despairing lo-fi folk so unadornedthat it made Cat Power sound like Mandy Moore. But here she pumps upher ragged muse via the thick-necked Chicago indie rock that PJ Harveyonce pimped so brilliantly. The flatlined brutalism of Wright's singingdelves even deeper into emotional black pools. Head AutomaticaDecadence(Warner Bros.) Dan the Automator foments alt-rock boom-bap behind thetoasting of Glassjaw singer Daryl Palumbo and comes up with a funreimagining of Sublime as Long Island loners.

July 7, 2004 – The FeverRed Bedroom(Kemado) They've got the fake names (Pony, Achilles), the au courantinfluences (New Order, XTC, '70s Stones), and even a jokey hipstercover (Sheila E's "Glamorous Life"). But the Fever are having so muchfun being a cliché, only the truly jaded could deny that thesugar-shocked exuberance of their full-length debut is a total blast. Jesse Sykes and the Sweet HereafterOh, My Girl(Barsuk) A sultry-voiced country diva from Seattle and a member ofRyan Adams' former band Whiskeytown craft an album of gorgeouslyslow-burning noir ballads. Sykes mourns the ghosts of lost love whilePhil Wandscher's gray-day guitar sounds like it hasn't slept since thelast episode of Twin Peaks. Hangar 18The Multi-Platinum Debut Album(Definitive Jux) One MC in this New York crew claims to test his rhymes on hisfirst-grade pupils--they must be some confused, crunked-up littletykes.