May 2, 2012 – "This is Chi, right?" sneers Kanye West at the end of a characteristically swaggering verse on his G.O.O.D. Music remix of Chief Keef's "I Don't Like." In fact, Keef is a prime example of the current media environment's exciting blend of hyperlocal and hyper-global, as a 16-year-old rapper whose muy macho style blew up on Chicago's streets last year but who is now already sharing tracks with the likes of absurdist up-and-comer Riff Raff and — well, we mentioned Kanye, right? Following on the heels of the Chi-shouting DJ Khaled collaboration formerly known as "Theraflu", plus the electronics-charged G.O.O.D. posse cut "Mercy," it's an event track, as West preps his long-forthcoming G.O.O.D. compilation.

May 1, 2012 – This band led by the former guitarist for now-defunct Nashville garage-punks Be Your Own Pet presents an increasingly compelling argument for being your own master instead. After maturing slightly on 2009's Echo Kid, Jonas Stein and the gang are set to release their third album, Butter, on September 11 via Serpents & Snakes Records. They've already been selling a limited 200-copy pressing of 7" singles featuring advance track "Sweet Thang," which makes its digital premiere here. When BYOP's charismatic ex-frontwoman Jemina Pearl is sweet, it's mostly in a skewed way — "I hate people, but I like you," she deadpans on an Iggy Pop-assisted 2009 solo single — and Turbo Fruits' latest is also off-kilter in its affection. "I'm trying to find myself," Stein concedes.

May 1, 2012 – Student loan debt is on a lot of people's minds lately. Protesters gathered last week in New York and about 20 other cities to call for forgiveness of this debt load, which has reached $1 trillion nationally. President Barack Obama "slow jammed the news" with the Roots to argue for keeping interest rates low on subsidized student loans. Canadian indie-rockers Metric channeled their rage over the issue through what lead singer and keyboardist Emily Haines describes as "a kind of '70s sleaze." "Youth Without Youth," the first single from Metric's upcoming album Synthetica, is a sludgy glam-rock stomper — call the beat "schaffel" if you listen to a lot of Kompakt minimal techno — haunted by lost childhood. The murming verses tell the story of a truly troubled kid, before a robotic backing vocal joins in on the live-wire hook.

May 1, 2012 – My Bloody Valentine have unveiled the first of the three — count 'em, just three — previously unreleased tracks set to appear on the ear-destroying Dublin quartet's upcoming reissues. Titled "Good for You," the song actually happens to have been floating around in bootleg form at least since 2009, a fact that might not seem encouraging considering it constitutes fully one-third of the ostensibly new material on the May 7 reissues. Sure, many shoegaze fanatics probably won't be able to help ourselves when given a chance to own remastered versions of these notorious perfectionists' peak-era EPs and albums, but a dispassionate music fan could fairly ask what's the big deal. Well, there's good news and just-pretty-good news — we'll give you the just-pretty-good news first.

May 1, 2012 – Virtual crate-digging might not get your fingers dirty, but it's still a labor of love. The first 100 records from the late John Peel's massive record collection are now available for browsing online. As fun as it can be to see the beloved British DJ's handwritten index cards for his trove of more than 65,000 slabs of vinyl, the real thrill is listening to the music, right? That's easier said than done. The good people behind the Peel online archive have gone about this process the legit route, which means the records that would most greatly benefit from rediscovery — in other words, the ones you can't buy on iTunes or stream on Spotify — are still unavailable to hear.

May 1, 2012 – Ane Brun's new album, It All Starts With One, finally arrives in the U.S. today, and judging by the video for tumultuous near-title track "One," what comes next could be revolutionary. The Norwegian-born singer-songwriter's latest has already reached platinum status in her home country, but its forcefully sung, instrumentally nuanced piano-pop confections ought to find a receptive audience here where people seem to be finally coming around to the greatness of Fiona Apple (although they're still overlooking Swedish dynamo Jenny Wilson). As Brun's voice booms and flutters atop subtle orchestration, the video shows a motley cast of characters rushing out for "Act 2" of a stage production that sure looks like more than a mere play.

April 30, 2012 – The video for Rihanna's rave-pop pulser "Where Have You Been" has hit Vevo, and although its multiple cultural references are no less mystifying than in the recent visuals for her Coldplay collaboration "Princess of China," the new clip does help put the discussion in a broader context. The "China" clip, remember, used Hindu imagery in a song seemingly about a country where, y'know, only 0.01 percent of people are Hindu. For Rihanna's 2011 Talk That Talk track, veteran music video director Dave Meyer (Jay-Z, OutKast, Britney Spears, Pink) sends the pop star to look for love in a variety of exotic-looking locales.

April 30, 2012 – When is a song teaser not just a song teaser? When it's nearly two minutes of what appears to be a new track from an upcoming M.I.A. album called Matangi, and it features some terrific dance moves identified by YouTube commenters as the Ivory Coast-born style Coupé-Décalé. Evidently entitled "Come Walk With Me," the track combines abrasively thudding, kuduro-like electronic percussion with a sweetly simple sunshine-pop melody. "It takes two," M.I.A. uncharacteristically coos, and then drops an F-bomb. Fader points to a roughly 20-second clip of what appears to be another Matangi track, this time with lyrics mentioning bikinis. The global-party atmosphere persists. No word yet on exactly when Ms. Maya Arulpragasam will drop her follow-up to 2010's awesome unruly Vicki Leekx mixtape and divisive-but-worthwhile Maya.

April 30, 2012 – Diplo's just-released book, 128 Beats Per Minute, credits Baltimore's DJ Blaqstarr with introducing the Mad Decent mogul to rapper Rye Rye, then producing her 2008 single, "Shake It to the Ground," when she was just 17. Blaqstarr and Rye Rye have each taken different but similar routes toward repping their hometown's B'more club sound to the masses — Interscope-signed Rye Rye has put out increasingly poppy singles like "Boom Boom," while Blaqstarr has worked with M.I.A. and last year slipped out his sleek, seductive The Divine EP, also on Interscope. With acoustic guitars, a peppy beat, and playfully charming vocals, "She Is Love" is from a new album that won't be out until this fall, but it's as summery a pan-genre pop tune as anything this side of the new Santigold record.

April 30, 2012 – An Oreo-eating man with a vest and cargo shorts must choose between his statuesque, imperious, wheelchair-bound wife and a cheerful, dancing android in the video for Here We Go Magic's "How Do I Know." From the Brooklyn band's May 8 album A Different Ship, the song is a fluttery, new-wave pop reflection on that feeling when you're not totally sure yet whether or not you're in love. The video, directed by Sean Pecknold (brother of Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold), puts an endearing twist on that theme with the addition of the cyber-woman, portrayed by dancer Jane Paik a.k.a. Janet Pants. Watching this sunny, Southwestern-tinged video, an answer comes to mind: You just know.