August 14, 2012 – DJ Khaled is known for his enviable contacts list, and this time he has called up past collaborator Hype Williams for an unusual two-song video. The king of gaudy '90s rap clips, last seen directing Jack White's incongruously thrilling "Freedom at 21" video, goes with a shaky, shadowy, black-and-white treatment for Khaled's Kanye West collaborations "I Wish You Would" (also featuring Rick Ross) and "Cold" (formerly known as "Way Too Cold," formerly known as "Theraflu"). Aside from some censored bits, the ominous music sounds the same as ever, Butters-like Kim Kardashian talk and all, but the tense video masterfully allows you to overlook lyrics like "flyer than a parakeet," transforming two iffy tracks into a bona fide pop event. The best-connected guys with the fattest bank accounts win again.

August 14, 2012 – Don't call Taylor Swift. And we don't mean maybe. The country-pop singer and songwriter's new single "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," out now digitally and unveiled yesterday during an online video chat, is swaying, cheeky, hyper-melodic pop that recalls the ear-sticking effervescence of a certain Carly Rae Jepsen smash. Only Swift's track is based around acoustic guitar strums rather than string sounds, and the theme is pure, fiery, woman-scorned Swift, atop a stomping beat that's the closest the now-22-year-old has come to dance-pop and R&B she might've heard on the radio growing up (TLC's "No Scrubs" seems apt more than lyrically). As pop culture writer Mike Barthel points out, the tune also takes aim at an unexpected target: Turns out the unwanted ex is an indie snob.

August 13, 2012 – Earl Sweatshirt has been making it a lot easier lately for those put off by Odd Future's more juvenile antics to come around and appreciate his music. In an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, the rapper talked about his volunteer work at a center for sexual-abuse survivors and signaled he was done rapping about rape. Last night, Sweatshirt shared details on Twitter about his upcoming sophomore album, but he also indicated a greater level of maturity. The new album has no release date or title just yet, but Sweatshirt says it will involve the Neptunes as well as the production duo's member Pharrell Williams. Also on tap are these fellow Odd Future members: Tyler, the Creator; Frank Ocean; Domo Genesis, Casey Veggies; Syd tha Kid; and Matt Martians.

August 13, 2012 – A little more than three years ago, Japandroids' Brian King and David Prowse made the six-hour drive from Chicago to Des Moines for a Monday night show. They stood in a nearly empty parking lot unloading their gear and bringing it up a street that's packed on weekend nights but was basically dead this particular summer evening. Your SPIN contributor was there, newly relocated from Brooklyn, and bumped into them on the way into the venue.

August 13, 2012 – "It's not a bed of flowers to be on the grind," Dan Keech deadpans on "Hard Work," from the Baltimore underground mainstay's upcoming album as Height and Friends. You wouldn't have known it from the free-spirited Rock and Roll, which arrives tomorrow via Friends/Cold Rhymes and puts the results of that grind on full display. The album title only tells half the truth: This Dan Deacon tourmate draws heavily from fuzzed-out rock aesthetics, but he's first and foremost a rapper, one with a distinctively off-kilter viewpoint. Hear the full album below, including guest contributions from such fellow Baltimore musicians as Kevin O'Meara of Dan Deacon Orchestra, producers Mickey Free and King Rhythm, and rootsy dream-pop duo Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack.

August 13, 2012 – 2 Chainz' solo debut album Based on a T.R.U. Story hits stores tomorrow, but the omnipresent Southern rapper is spending money at the strip club like he's already gone platinum. The predictably not-quite-SFW video for Nicki Minaj-assisted single "I Luv Dem Strippers" is directed by Benny Boom, who also directed the MTV Video Music Award-nominated clip for the pair's previous collaboration, "Beez in the Trap." Your enjoyment of these latest visuals will depend on how much you like seeing these two rap among strippers doing what strippers do, but the icily minimal trap-rap track feels like a winner, with one of Nicki's fiercest verses in a while. Though her pop side might have the broadest appeal, she always goes hardest as an MC on tracks where she's competing to out-macho the boys (remember "Roman's Revenge"?).

August 13, 2012 – Any teenage Anglophiles had their pop preferences justified last night during London's closing ceremony for the 2012 Olympics. NBC's "special correspondent" Ryan Seacrest had said the event would be "relaxed" and "fun," but that was an understatement. Held in an 80,000-seat stadium in London's Olympic park, was a nuttily playful, charmingly over-the-top spectacle, with a lack of self-seriousness or restraint that it's hard to imagine a U.S. hosted Olympics ever mustering — as NBC's predictably awkward coverage of the event drove home. The Who, the Spice Girls, Fatboy Slim, Russell Brand, Eric Idle, George Michael, Annie Lennox, the Kinks' Ray Davies, Oasis' Liam Gallagher, Jessie J, One Direction, Tinie Tempah, Taio Cruz, Queen's Brian May, and many other performers were on hand to extinguish the Olympic torch. Athletes from Michael Phelps to Usain Bolt were there, as well.

August 10, 2012 – Merchandise, one of SPIN's 5 Best New Artists for June, just revealed a North American tour that will keep the Florida "post-punk" band busy into October. The new video for "In Nightmare Room," off of Merchandise's excellent Children of Desire LP, sets the band's ominously textured melancholy (one layer of its artful blend of mopey '80s goth-pop with shoegaze and krautrock atmospherics) against grainy visuals we're told are inspired by an actual nightmare frontman Carson Cox woke up from last year.

August 10, 2012 – Jens Lekman is looking for love using the process of elimination. Director Marcus Söderlund, whose style in videos for Lekman and other Swedish popsters has always relied on a lack of special effects, pares back even further in his winning new clip for the title track from the Gothenburg singer-songwriter-producer's new album, I Know What Love Isn't (due out on September 4 via Secretly Canadian, and one day earlier in the U.K. and EU via Service). The first video from the album, for the richly melancholic "Erica America," was minimal enough already, a single-take glimpse at Lekman and his band performing in front of a freight elevator. For "I Know What Love Isn't," Lekman and his accompanists only have a stark white backdrop, and Lekman doesn't even get around to lip-synching all of the lyrics (he does, however, find time for a charming twirl during the flute solo).

August 10, 2012 – You might be aware that on Sunday, Drake posted a new song featuring his own vocals over a previously unreleased Aaliyah recording, with production by the Canadian rapper-singer's usual partner Noah "40" Shebib. He also gave an interview where he said, "It's all off of an Aaliyah project that me and 40 are commanding … To get 13-14 new Aaliyah songs … everybody should be excited." On Monday, however, the late singer's brother Rashaud Haughton threw cold water on the idea, saying in a Facebook post that "there is no official album being released and supported by the Haughton family." Not Aaliyah's immediate family, perhaps, but another relative has confirmed the project is underway.