October 19, 2009 – It was a weekend of wild things, particularly of the lupine variety: unfit parents in Colorado cried wolf, SNL guest Shakira howled like a wolf, and a movie about a boy dressed as a wolf opened in theaters nationwide.Had it not been for that balloon rumpus, the latter would have easily been the most captivating spectacle. I expected to be bored by Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are. Unless they were released during my own childhood, I don't typically enjoy movies that are for or about children, and I completely slept on Maurice Sendak's 1963 book (or, at least, have no recollection of reading it). So I wasn't among the scores of people eagerly anticipating this release ever since Jonze began working on it an impressive six years ago.

September 13, 2009 – What's the first rock album you owned?My sister bought me Green Day's Dookie when I was 11 because, according to her, I was gay. I'd only listened to musical theater up until that point, so it was something of an intervention. It confused me. I couldn't figure out what Dookie was about. I realized later that not every album has to have a plot. What's your dream concert lineup?Jesus and Mozart. No, wait, I'm mixing this up with my answer for "Who would I want to have dinner with?" Do you and your girlfriend have a favorite song?She only listens to feminist anthems, and I can't get into Cat Power. My favorite band is Ween. I know every lyric. They never let you in on the joke, which I love. Who did you listen to in high school to be cool?I was just lucky to get away unscathed.

August 19, 2009 – Photos by Nick Haymes "Indie boys and their guitars have been officially replaced," declares Dede Wegg-Prosser of the electro-dance trio We Have Band. She's right, at least according to the London-based rising stars featured here, none of whom have much in common with a certain American group (hint: rhymes with blokes) that overtook the city at the turn of the millennium. We Have Band toured the world, sans record deal, on the basis of four homespun but contagious demos (think Fischerspooner minus the theatrics). Their occasional tourmate and onetime remixer Mica Levi of Micachu & the Shapes takes the DIY ethos one step further, proffering the transmogrified sounds of a vacuum cleaner and a toy guitar on her gloriously spazzy lo-fi debut, Jewellery.

July 18, 2009 – What music were you obsessed with in high school? Iron Maiden. When I was 13, I silk-screened an Iron Maiden Eddie on the back of my Repo Man and Clockwork Orange T-shirts. Even though I was really fat, I avoided getting beat up because the tough kids would pass me their jean jackets and be like, "Do Eddie from Number of the Beast." What did you listen to in preparation for your scenes in Inglourious Basterds? Right before the scene where I beat a guy to death with a baseball bat, I listened to Miley Cyrus. My girlfriend put that on my iPod as a joke, and I was so mortified that the other guys might find it that I just started going crazy. "Nobody's Perfect" became my psych-up-to-kill song. What's the last album you bought on somebody's recommendation? Brad Pitt mentioned Kings of Leon on set, so of course everyone went out and bought every Kings of Leon album.

July 1, 2009 – What was the first album you bought with your own money? Vanilla Ice's To the Extreme, but let's not put it all on me. Plenty of people were into the Ice Man. It's not like Vanilla Ice sold ten records, and I'm one of the ten people that bought it. We all got fooled. I just happened to be at the age when it was the first album I bought. Who comes after Prince on your iPod?Prinzhorn Dance School. They're a DFA group. I like the song "You Are the Space Invader." Whose T-shirt do you proudly wear?I have an old DJ Shadow shirt that I bought at a show in '99. There were only three of them made and I got one of them, and now any time I meet a girl who's a DJ Shadow fan, they offer me sexual favors in exchange for it. But it's just such a cool shirt that I can't give it up. So no.

June 1, 2009 – In case you missed the MTV Movie Awards last night -- or only half-watched it, like I did -- here's our verdict on the night's hot topics: Eminem v. Bruno -- Was Em in on the joke? I'm about 67% convinced that he was. While Eminem seems far too cranky to willingly participate in a prank that involved Baron-Cohen's gay character Bruno descending from the ceiling to rest his junk in Mathers' face, everyone is fighting for attention these days. Audiences are busy flitting from one YouTube clip to the next, but this stunt has the potential to keep us talking about Eminem at least until Wednesday -- so maybe it was worth two balls to the face. Plus, speaking of balls, does MTV have any?

May 20, 2009 – What was the last concert you went to? I saw the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl last summer. I don't mean to be the douche bag that says, "The Arcade Fire were transporting!" But they were transporting. And I was only there because I have a big crush on [LCD's] James Murphy, but I was like, "I can get behind this 116-member-band thing." What's your favorite album?Graceland is the album that I have bought more times than any other. When I was a little kid, my parents introduced me to Simon & Garfunkel, so that was the music I assumed everyone listened to. From the ages of six to 26, I forgot about it, and then I rebought it recently, and it's like a different album. It makes me bawl. Growing up, did your parents object to anything you were listening to? "Weird Al" Yankovic.

May 1, 2009 – Waiting for Bat for Lashes to take the stage at NYC's Bowery Ballroom last night, I overheard one guy next to me counseling another: "Don't get your hopes up. What if she's not as good as you expect?" To which his friend responded, "It's Natasha! It's going to be amazing." It was amusing -- and kind of awesome, at this early stage in her career -- to hear Natasha Khan, the warrior princess/Kate Bush acolyte/horse whisperer/singer/multi-instrumentalist who records and performs as Bat for Lashes, discussed with the first-name-basis-ness that accompanies a level of fame more suited for Stevie Nicks or Dolly Parton. The former nursery school teacher has only just released her exquisite second album (Two Suns, heartily endorsed by SPIN).

April 3, 2009 – Adventureland is set in 1987, the same year that John Hughes released his last coming-of-age drama, Some Kind of Wonderful, which is a total coincidence but an appropriate one. While Hughes never again delivered a classic on par with The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it's possible that with Adventureland, writer-director Greg Mottola has. Okay, that's probably excessive praise. For Mottola to fill Hughes' shoes, he would have had to depict today's kids, which he sorta did in Superbad -- and ended up with something funny but, at times, tediously vulgar.

March 25, 2009 – Natasha Khan is in the middle of a shopping spree at a vintage-clothing boutique in Manhattan's East Village when she gets some bad news from the store's owner: A remake of one of her favorite movies, The Karate Kid, is in the works."Noooo!" she moans from inside the dressing room, where she has been debating the purchase of a pair of white, high-heeled ankle boots. ("I'm not sure how Stevie Nicks I want to go," the singer muses, "although I love Stevie Nicks.") Also, according to the proprietor, the new version will star "somebody crazy." "What, like Lindsay Lohan?" Khan asks.Try Will Smith's son, Jaden.Khan grimaces. Like many of her beloved pop-cultural touchstones -- among them Pat Benatar and The Wonder Years' Winnie Cooper -- the film is important to her because it reminds her of the '80s, an era she often draws on for inspiration when writing and performing as Bat for Lashes.