April 26, 2012 – Kid Cudi was last seen putting out a tepid "alternative rock" album as part of his WZRD collaboration with "Day 'N' Nite" producer Dot da Genius. After that terribly sung trainwreck, newly surfaced solo track "Dennis, Hook Me Up With Some More Whiskey" is being billed as Cudi's return to rapping, but for an artist already known for blending genres, that's only semi-accurate. Cudi is singing here, all right, though with a rapid flow and limited range that make it function as rapping. Produced by Scott Mescudi (Cudi himself) "Dennis" returns to WZRD-style mook-rock-guitar-that-makes-Rebirth-sound-brilliant.

April 25, 2012 – A few more upcoming music festivals announced their lineups yesterday, and some big, familiar names are at the top of the billing. Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters will headline Music Midtown, which comes back to Atlanta's Piedmont Park September 21-22 after being revived in 2011. The Avett Brothers, Girl Talk, T.I., Florence and the Machine, Ludacris, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and others are also on the lineup. Music Midtown originally ran for 12 years from 1994 to 2005. Visit Music Midtown's website for tickets and scheduling information. Skrillex and Snoop Dogg, meanwhile, are among the acts slated to perform at Ottawa Bluesfest, which takes place June 4-16 at the Canadian capital's LeBreton Flats Park.

April 25, 2012 – Ahmir "Questlove" (or "?uestlove") Thompson is such a dedicated supporter of President Barack Obama that the Roots drummer uses a picture of the two together as his Twitter avatar. Obama, for his part, has recently been known to show off his presidential pipes, singing "Sweet Home Chicago" with Mick Jagger after saving the music industry by crooning a few words from Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" during an appearance at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater.

April 25, 2012 – "Let me hear that song," Luke Jenner howls over the piano-house dance-rock of "How Deep Is Your Love?," a standout from the Rapture's excellent 2011 album, In the Grace of Your Love. The first single from the New York band's first album in five years now finally has a video (via Noisey), and it's a weird one: Jenner gets reduced to toy-like proportions, and for some reason a grandmotherly African-American woman spirits him to a church service, where, OK, the joyous mood complements the song's worshipful catharsis. Either way, at least the clip lets us hear this euphoric, beautifully uncluttered dancefloor stomper one more time. Read "The Rapture's Second Coming," from the October 2011 issue of SPIN.

April 24, 2012 – Nate Dogg, who died last year at 41, did not appear at Coachella as a hologram, despite a TMZ report he would be getting the treatment that turned out to be reserved for Tupac. But the West Coast rapper-singer has still come back from the grave to host some supremely laid-back, G-funk-tinged festivities with old co-conspirator Warren G and Compton rapper Game on "Party We Will Throw Now!" The title's somewhat stilted syntax makes sense in context, between '90s-oozing synths, clipped strings, and cognac-soaked piano chords. Available on iTunes now, the track lacks that essential moment that would really bring back the G-funk era, but the Regulator's dextrous verse, in particular, handily earns its keep. A shame that Nate Dogg couldn't be here to give his collaborators that extra bit of (non-dro) inspiration, but it's great to hear his smoothly funky singing just the same.

April 24, 2012 – When Lil Wayne ended last year's MTV Video Music Awards with a one-two performance of a shamelessly pandering, semi-romantic ballad, "How to Love," and an almost entirely censored gangsta-rap chest-beater, "John," most of the people we follow on Twitter tended to blanch. But the rapper-ternt-brand (shouts to Nicki Minaj) was also demarcating the two poles of what a quick Top 40 radio listen would indicate people want to hear. Wiz Khalifa's new "Work Hard, Play Hard" sounds poised for radio success, and when an opening barrage of epithets is edited for mass consumption, the first single from the Pittsburgh rapper's August 28 O.N.I.F.C.

April 24, 2012 – Although it has been almost four years since Beck last released a proper studio album, 2008's Modern Guilt, the alternative lifer has only become more intriguing in the meantime. The latest example is Beck's stark, heartbreaking take on the folk standard "Corrina, Corrina," which you can stream over at Pitchfork. Little more than finger-picked acoustic guitar and Beck's deep, resonant moan, the recording takes on an even more poignant context due to its appearance on maternal-health nonprofit Every Mother Counts' May 1 charity compilation, due out via Starbucks. As with another recently surfaced Beck version of a much-covered classic, "I Only Have Eyes for You," the rendition takes a lyric and melody that have become larger-than-life due to over-familiarity, and wrenches them back down to the here and now through sheer vocal presence.

April 24, 2012 – Last night's TV lineup turned out majestic pop-rockers, reunited Southern rappers, and snotty Swedish garage-rockers. Progress, right? It wasn't actually as varied as that might sound, but we'll break it down for you. New York's fun., led by Nate Ruess of Arizona cult faves the Format, stopped by Late Show With David Letterman for an expectedly bombastic rendition of chart-topper "We Are Young,", though when we weren't lamenting the absence of that song's featured guest Janelle Monáe we couldn't help but marvel at Ruess's impossibly pearly whites.

April 24, 2012 – Brian Borcherdt might be best known as the co-founder of Toronto dance-rock instrumentalists Holy Fuck, but his music isn't only great for soundtracking awesome dog-and-cat car chases. As a singer-songwriter, Borcherdt has also kept on releasing a couple of mellower solo albums, and prior to joining Holy Fuck, he was a member of a little band called By Divine Right alongside Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning and Leslie Feist. On July 10, Polyvinyl/Hand Drawn Dracula will release Total Dust, Borcherdt's debut album under the name Dusted. "(Into the) Atmosphere," the first track to emerge from the project, is a dewy lo-fi pop ramble, with sweetly multi-tracked vocals, cavernous layers of melancholy guitar strums, and galloping, off-kilter percussion.

April 23, 2012 – Even for those of us who watched SXSW last month from our laptops rather than in person over the glow of our iPhone Twitter apps, Fiona Apple's performance was a revelation. The studio version of "Every Single Night," one of a small handful of new songs she sang in Austin, is a revelation in its own right. The first recording to surface from the open-vein singer-songwriter's follow-up to 2005's still-great Extraordinary Machine only refines the music-box-like intricacy of the live rendition, as Apple's expressive vocals alternate between emotion-wracked whispers and thunderous yawps that suggest tUnE-yArDs with another painful decade-plus worth of perspective. A song about an internal conflict, "Every Single Night" is also a recording in conflict with itself, as Apple's feral vocals threaten to rip apart their self-consciously rococo backdrop.