May 18, 2012 – Every year, Portland nonprofit PDX Pop Now! puts out a compilation that spotlights the city's vibrant local music scene. Along with fundraisers, grants, and donations, sales of the record help the group hold an annual three-day festival and conduct youth-oriented outreach programs. This year's PDX Pop Now! compilation is due out on June 7, and it includes "Ride for My City," a bass-heavy hometown-pride anthem by 15-year-old rapper Rose. Rose will also be performing at PDX Pop Now!'s compilation release show, set for June 7 at Holocene and with a bill that includes Hollywood Tans, Wild Ones, and Sun Angle. She has a mixtape coming out soon, and her tender age is appropriate given the nonprofit's work on music in schools programs and on making all-ages shows possible in Portland. Previous artists who have contributed to PDX Pop Now!

May 18, 2012 – Kanye West's upcoming G.O.O.D. Music label compilation will be titled Cruel Summer, and he'll be premiering a film of the same name on May 23 at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Island Def Jam has announced. Created by West and his recently formed fashion venture, Donda, the film will be shown on seven screens and is being touted as a mix of short film and art installation. A poster promoting the event says West directed and co-wrote the film, and it will feature both rapper Kid Cudi and comedian Aziz Ansari. Cruel Summer will be showing for two days, and tickets are available through West's website. The Cannes premiere follows a few weeks after the video for West's "Lost in the World," from 2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The film also comes as West ramps up the publicity for his G.O.O.D.

May 18, 2012 – Lemonade is a Brooklyn-based dance-pop trio that combines elements of post-punk, house, and other styles in a way that works similarly to the music of groups like Cut Copy, Tanlines, Delorean, or the Tough Alliance. On May 29, Lemonade will release their second album for Matador imprint True Panther, Diver, the follow-up to 2008's self-titled debut. Now the band has unveiled "Softkiss," which camouflages its vulnerable yearning in blissed-out electronics — and faster tempos than previously shared Diver slow-burner "Neptune." Wonders singer Callan Clendenin: "When it's cold, do you still wear my coat?" It's not cold, but "Soft Kiss" feels seasonally appropriate.

May 17, 2012 – Any fears that the xx might go the full David Guetta on the London electronic pop outfit's upcoming sophomore album appear to be misplaced. In December, producer Jamie xx suggested the follow-up to the group's Mercury Prize-winning, self-titled debut might take on more of a club feel. The xx unveiled new songs in a string of London live dates this week, and fan footage so far reveals music that is decidedly in the smoldering, understated vein of The xx. One new song, its title as yet unknown, features the xx singer-guitarist Romy Madley Croft's husky voice over precise, minimal guitar and percussion, with the refrain "Being as in love with you as I am." Another, more propulsive number focuses on a whispery duet between Croft and singer-bassist Oliver Sim, with a steadily loping rhythm section beneath spidery, reverberant guitar lines and sweeps of synthesized strings.

May 17, 2012 – If Nicki Minaj wanted to sum up the divide that tends to frustrate people about her Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, she could hardly have done it more clearly than in her latest video. As SPIN's No Trivia blog noted recently, the album goes straight from a Nas verse on towering posse cut "Champion" to fluffy Chris Brown hook-up "Right by My Side," a jarring transition that shows the artist's shift from "Old Nicki" to new Nicki in its least favorable light. It's only fitting, then, that Minaj's new "Right by My Side" video finds the two competing for her affections. Directed by Benny Boom, who also oversaw the visuals for "Beez in the Trap," this one is a brightly lit romance, with lots of shots of a blonde Minaj letting Nas buy her nice things while Brown tries to get her attention.

May 17, 2012 – Chuck Brown, known as "the godfather of go-go," died yesterday in Baltimore at age 75, the Washington Post reports. With his band the Soul Searchers, the singer, guitarist, and songwriter helped pioneer the funky D.C.-area sound known as go-go, which weaves together songs via the continuous groove of a live band rather than the turntables and DJs of hip-hop.

May 16, 2012 – After releasing its lineup in drips and drabs over the past few months, Bonnaroo has now unveiled its full schedule. As Consequence of Sound points out, the festival has also added to its list of performers, with GZA, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Pelican, Sara Watkins, and the Dirty Guv'Nahs now among those making the trek to Tennessee June 7-10. GZA will be performing Liquid Swords in full backed by Grupo Fantasma. Of course, the arrival of the schedule now means it's time for Bonnaroo-goers to start plotting a course through the music-packed four-day event. Luckily, festival organizers appear to have done an exceptional job in limiting the number of tough decisions — surely there can't be that many people who love Major Lazer and Black Star equally, or Flying Lotus and Umphrey's Mcgee? — and keeping everything nicely staggered, so few sets conflict entirely.

May 16, 2012 – A new Yeasayer song has surfaced online, and it's not just any Yeasayer song. In fact, "Henrietta" — which We All Want Someone to Shout For reports was shipped on physical CD to fans on the Brooklyn psych rockers' mailing list — happens to be keyboardist-singer Chris Keating's personal favorite of the tracks from the band's upcoming third album. Or so Keating told SPIN last fall, explaining that the track was inspired by reading about Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose rare form of cancer gave her a posthumous role in major medical breakthroughs like the polio vaccine. As promised, the track is a "dubbed-out pseudo-science-fiction song," wringing drama out of the remarkable fact that Lacks' cells still continue to live on after her death.

May 16, 2012 – El-P's visit to Late Show With David Letterman last night could hardly have arrived at a more auspicious moment for the skronky New York hip-hop stalwart. The same day also saw the release of R.A.P. Music, the tremendously inspired new album by Atlanta rap veteran Killer Mike, which El-P produced. This coming Tuesday, the former Definitive Jux label head will issue his own first non-instrumental album in five years, Cancer for Cure, on Mississippi-based indie Fat Possum. "I feel like I've been given yet another chance to do what I love to do, and maybe I don't deserve it," El-P says in the latest issue of the Village Voice. "But this is a rebirth record for me." That born-again fervor came across in El-P's fiery performance of Cancer for Cure's "Stay Down," with Islands' Nick Diamonds on hand to reprise his vocals and synth work from the album track.

May 16, 2012 – It might be helpful to think about the gargantuan bass of the recent crew of dubstep-inclined U.S. festival ravers the way you might think about beer. In the early '90s, before the American craft brewery movement caught on in a big way, Keystone Light advertised itself as the antidote to something called "Bitter Beer Face." Two decades later, beer makers are used to boasting about their hoppy flavors, and Bassnectar's gritty new video hits with IPA-strength intensity — plus some effects-tweaked facial expressions that strongly resemble that beer-twisted visage. The visuals for "Ugly," from the California producer's (government name: Lorin Ashton) new Vava Voom, are as frenetic and no-holds-barred as the drum-crazed track itself.