August 27, 2012 – "Are you mad at me?" Chan Marshall will ask you this whether you are a bartender mixing her a tequila and soda after closing time or a bodega clerk waiting to take her order or a passerby walking a dog or, certainly, a new acquaintance grappling with how to speak to her at length about deeply personal subjects she is both loathe to dig into and unable to avoid. You will assure her, repeatedly, that of course you're not mad. Why would you be? But eventually, you'll realize this is just a thing she does, the way you might say, "Know what I mean?" She talks a lot, to everyone, gregarious and inquisitive with strangers in a way they may not be used to; there's a lot of energy to burn. She is disarmingly forthright and carefully guarded, often within the same thought, constantly measuring how much she should be saying as she's already in the middle of saying it.

July 18, 2012 – While we all continue to wait for SPIN cover boy Nathan Williams' next Wavves album, Stay Calm, the debut from Sweet Valley, a collaboration between Williams and his brother Kynan, will be released on August 7 by Fool's Gold.

July 13, 2012 – Seems weird to say that 2012 could be the most impressive year of Bob Pollard’s patently ridiculous career, but after two way-better-than-anyone-could-have-expected — and criminally under-the-radar — Guided By Voices albums already out, and a third one due by the time you’re finished reading this probably, a solid solo album would be the cherry on top of a sundae you didn’t even know you ordered. This echo-laden, vaguely psych-rock track from the forthcoming solo outing Jack Sells the Cow sounds, somewhat counterintuitively given the history of Pollard’s swollen discography, a bit more produced than a lot of the new GBV stuff, and could ably serve as a salute to fellow Ohioans and next-gen lo-fi purveyors, Cloud Nothings. As a bonus, you can download "Who's Running My Ranch," too.

July 12, 2012 – Wasn't long ago that Apple's little white-on-white earbuds were so stylishly iconic that they were the visual centerpiece of the iPod — aw, remember iPods? — early-aughts advertising campaign. But a funny thing happened once people spent a few years with those things lodged in their ears: They weren't comfortable, they didn't sound particularly good, and after a week or two, the pristine white would get dingy and frayed. It's not a stretch to say that the Beats By Dre headphones went a long way towards changing the way people think about how they put music into — and onto — their melons.

June 28, 2012 – This week, while on tour with Guns N' Roses in Israel, Tommy Stinson let slip that he and fellow former Replacement Paul Westerberg were working on a song together to benefit their old guitarist, Slim Dunlap, who suffered a debilitating stroke this past winter. Slim's wife, Chrissie, and the Replacements' former manager, Peter Jesperson confirm the benefit project, but it's not your run-of-the-mill tribute album. "Tribute records can be so ubiquitous and don't necessarily sell well," says Jesperson, who was inspired to form the seminal Minneapolis label Twin/Tone Records after seeing Dunlap's pre-Replacements band Thumbs Up.

June 20, 2012 – Since college, Brooklyn-based activist Josh Fox, 39, had run a politically oriented theater company. But when oil and gas companies started poking, literally, around the land near his family's house in Pennsylvania, he learned more about the widespread process and attendant risks of hydraulic fracking — drilling for natural shale gas — and began toting a video camera. His resulting documentary, Gasland, premiered at Sundance in 2010 and was subsequently bought by HBO and nominated for an Oscar. It exposes the stories of people from small towns across America who have experienced shocking environmental disturbances (including flammable drinking water). Predictably, he's caught the attention of the nation's oil-and-gas concerns and their government proxies. Now, as Fox finishes the sequel, he's become the mouthpiece for an increasingly vehement resistance.

June 14, 2012 – For seven years, comic Billy Eichner has filmed himself urgently accosting strangers on New York City streets to ask them about decidedly nonurgent pop-culture ephemera. He's incorporated the videos into his stage routine, but it wasn't until the debut this past December of his Funny or Die–produced quasi game show for Fuse, Billy on the Street, that his talent for being a manic, preening, one-man Perez Hilton comments section found a wide audience (the second season debuts this fall). Then, as the confetti was still flying after the Giants' Super Bowl victory in February, an unflappable Eichner, at the behest of Conan, stormed the field to ask players what they thought of Madonna's halftime show.

May 24, 2012 – The Afghan Whigs released Up In It, their Sub Pop debut, in 1990. They played their last shows in 1999. It is very safe to call them a '90s band. But while that usually connotes some sort of one-hit wonderment or frozen-in-amber datedness, the Afghan Whigs always felt like they spanned every inch of those 10 years; from the Cincinnati proto-grunge that got them mixed up with Sub Pop to begin with to the fraught, bursting-at-the-seams mid-career major-label power plays to the soul-tinged fadeout, they were buoyed up and beaten down by everything that weird decade had to offer. Which is why their first show together since then, at New York's Bowery Ballroom last night, felt less like an easy nostalgia trip than a reminder of problems we, perhaps selectively, forgot we ever had.

May 23, 2012 – In the final episode of Bob's Burgers' second season, Bob's dreams of becoming a celebrity chef with a recurring segment on the morning show Get On Up are compromised when he's overshadowed by a scenery-chomping — and burger-chomping — sidekick: Gene in a Sasquatch mask that he procured in return for pop-and-lock lessons. Tensions rise, relationships are frayed, remote-control helicopters are used for self-debasement, and Tina dates a boy doppelganger obsessed with tasting the co-host's hair. Nora Smith, esteemed writer of "Beefsquatch," kindly responds to our goofball questions. As always, spoilers and inscrutable inside references abound. Was this the highest number of burger specials in one episode? Do you have any favorites? Yes. I believe that it's the highest number of burger specials in anything ever.

May 15, 2012 – In the penultimate episode of Bob's Burger's second season features unchecked hormones, unchecked flatulence, and a terrifying glimpse into Tina's dark side as she falls in with bad-seed new student Tammy Larson (Jenny Slate), who knows that the way to Jimmy Jr's. affections involves pilfered margarita mix and good old-fashioned manipulation. Meanwhile, Bob gets hooked on the latest entertainment craze, extreme patty-caking. (It's cooler than it sounds, even if it proves too much for Teddy.) Holly Schlesinger, who wrote "Bad Tina," gamely fields our silly questions and arcane references, few of which will make sense to you if you haven't seen the episode, which you totally should. Tina has written a pretty impressive collection of slash fiction. What's likely hotter: Sexy Sesame Street or Erotic Bones? Hmm... Erotic Bones sounds hotter.