Pitchfork

 -- As Bloodshy & Avant, the Swedish producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg provided the deliriously great synthetic whizzing noises for jams like Britney Spears's "Toxic" and "Piece of Me", as well as hits for Kylie Minogue and Rachel Stevens. And now they've pulled an N.E.R.D., hooking up with musician Andrew Wyatt (Fires of Rome, Black Beetle) and forming a band called Miike Snow. They've already leaked a few tracks, and had songs remixed by DJ Mehdi, Crookers, Benny Blanco, and Treasure Fingers. Downtown Recordings will release Miike Snow's self-titled debut album June 9. 

-- Syracuse indie poppers Ra Ra Riot have a busy few months coming up. They'll spend the entire spring touring all over North America, playing shows with the likes of Cut Off Your Hands and Passion Pit before a run of dates opening for Death Cab for Cutie. Also, on March 3, Barsuk will release the single for "Can You Tell", from their latest album The Rhumb Line. The single includes a remix by Tom Campesinos! of Los Campesinos.

-- Also touring North America this spring: tough-to-Google Calgary fuzz-rock men Women, who will play dates with Crystal Stilts, Abe Vigoda, and Chad VanGaalen.

-- NY/SF dance-skronkers Lemonade apparently want you to hear what other people have done with their music so badly that they're giving this stuff away for free. Right now, the RCRD LBL website is offering their Remixtape remix compilation for free download. They've also got a bunch of American shows coming up this March.

Photos by Bao Nguyen

Just when I figure no one can top opening act Matt & Kim's Kim Schifino when it comes to 100-proof enthusiasm behind a kit, I'm introduced to Lily Allen's drummer-- easily the most entertaining part of last night's "secret" MySpace gig at NYC's Bowery Ballroom. Allen didn't introduce her four-man band by name (or acknowledge them much, really), so a nickname will have to suffice. Candidates: Death Jazz (based on his shirt), King Hippo (based on his gape), or Bozzer (based on his general Brit-rock journeyman vibe). Let's go with Bozzer.

Bozzer was playing to about 500 people, but nobody told him that. In his mind, Bozzer was playing to a sea of Union Jacks cascading through a sold-out Wembley crowd. He was like a pre-accident version of Def Leppard's Rick Allen, Tommy Lee sans rotating rig, a force. He raised and crossed sticks before coming down hard on the crashes, added hi-hat flourishes that were never meant to be there, and generally acted like a fucking star.

Which was nice, since Lily Allen's stage persona is more post-star. Which is a nice way of saying she stuck with a tipsy wobble emphasized by PG striptease moves the entire night. Very "AbFab" prequel. She makes fun of her own songs, i.e., "this is the big one from the album I [dripping sarcasm] love so much" before playing "Smile", "this one's quite boring" before "Him". She even made fun of her own making-fun intros: "I hate how I'm introducing everything like 'this next song...' like it's fucking story time."

In between these preludes, she sang songs, mostly from her new album, It's Not Me, It's You. Some of the new songs are less than mean, and Lily's still getting used to being a sympathetic figure-- she looked hesitant without insults to work for her on "I Could Say" and "Who'd Have Known". She seemed more excited about an encore cover of Britney Spears' "Womanizer" than any of her own compositions. Chalk it up to artistic distance. Because while there's a kinship-- Ms. Spears' hit is all about insulting dudes, after all-- Lily probably wouldn't admit to being duped in the first place.

Lily Allen

Photo by Natalie Kardos

Kanye West's blog scoops just about everybody pretty regularly these days. If the whole global music superstar/sneaker designer thing ever gets old, Kanye will be able to launch a music news website and put the rest of us out of business. Maybe I shouldn't give him any ideas.

Kanye's latest breaking news story: the French house duo Justice have designed a Coke bottle! Justice haven't made any new music for a while, but now they've inspired both a house and a Coke bottle. It's nice to see that a couple of people, at least, have their priorities straight. (To be fair, Kanye did get this scoop from Hypebeast, who he credits.)

Justice teamed up with So Me, the guy who designs the sleeves for Ed Banger Records releases (and the visionary behind both Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." and Kanye's "Good Life" videos), to put together this thing, which looks like this:

So: A zipper slowly coming down and revealing a Party City billboard, basically. According to Advertising Age, this new Club Coke bottle will be for sale only in dance clubs in Europe. I don't want to freak out the folks at Coca-Cola too badly here, but something tells me that the kind of coke popular in European dance clubs isn't the kind you drink.

Coke will officially unveil the new bottle tonight at the VIP Room in Paris. At midnight, Justice will DJ the event.

Photo by David Horvitz

When Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart does the solo-acoustic thing, he doesn't exactly render his band's noise-pop in Starbucks-friendly form. Next year, Stewart plans to release a new Xiu Xiu record called Dear God, I Hate Myself, so that should give you some idea of what you'll be getting with solo Stewart. If he doesn't make your knuckles turn white, he's not doing his job.

In April, Stewart heads out on his first solo tour since 2003. He's bringing along a guitar, a bird call whistle, and an ancient synth called a stylophone. And as part of an accompanying art project, Stewart and frequent Xiu Xiu accomplice David Horvitz intend to take solo portrait photos of every single person at every one of these shows, scary door guys included. Stewart will post all these photos on Xiu Xiu's website, and afterwards he'll publish the best 300 as a book. And don't worry about your hair: there will be Xiu Xiu combs available at every show to make sure you look your best.

In addition to the combs, Stewart will sell some truly interesting merch on this tour, including hand-decorated mix CDs, homemade chocolate, and "a poster series of his massive collection of stuffed animals," according to a press release.

And if that alone isn't enough homespun Jamie Stewart craftsmanship for you, pretty soon you'll be able to sign up for a subscription series that Stewart will offer via the Xiu Xiu website. Apparently, Stewart has a stockpile of "ambient, experimental, and minimalist works" that he's looking to unload. For $100, Stewart will send you one CD per month for a year. He'll hand-number every one of these discs, hand-wrap them in felt and yarn, and stick a different leaf under the tray of each CD. This subscription even comes with a "deluxe edition": For an extra $10, he'll throw in an additional disc and some of that homemade chocolate. But he's only selling 50 of these subscriptions, so act fast.

Here's what the CDs look like-- and the chocolate!

Atlanta drug-rockers and perennial Pitchfork faves Deerhunter were all set to embark on a European tour starting tonight in Prague, but unspecified health problems laid them up and forced them to postpone tour, as we reported.

But now they've rescheduled many of the shows for May.

Photo by Jason Bergman

Curated by the National's Bryce Dessner, the Music Now Festival is probably the hippest experimental music event taking place in Cincinnati March 11-12. (Probably.) We already reported most of the line-up-- the Books, Toumani Diabate, Kronos Quartet playing a new composition from Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry-- but something new and exciting has come up.

Turns out the fest nabbed Battles dude Tyondai Braxton (yes, he's the guy who does all those evil Keebler Elf vox on Mirrored) to compose a new piece, which will be played by the Kronos Quartet on day one of the two-day extravaganza at Cincinnati's Memorial Hall. Ok, now it's definitely the hippest experimental event taking place in Cincinnati March 11-12. Case closed.

Photo by Amelia Handscomb

New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo are once again ready to bring the silly to the masses live and in person. The second season of "Flight of the Conchords" is currently running on HBO Sunday nights, and now Bret and Jemaine are planning an extensive tour throughout North America in April and May. Apparently, our dream of a Kings of (Musical) Comedy arena tour with "Weird" Al, the Lonely Island, the Conchords, and headliners Barenaked Ladies will have to wait.

The FOC tour will be in support of the duo's as-yet-untitled sophomore album, due April 14 on Sub Pop. There's also a 7" in the works, featuring "Pencils in the Wind" backed by "Albi the Racist Dragon". But, as we reported a few weeks back, the Conchords are putting out a new song on iTunes every Monday throughout season two-- the LP will feature those ten tracks plus five or so newbies. Recent song "Hurt Feelings" is an emo rap track that trumps most of Atmosphere's catalogue. Deadpan it:

McG, the single-named director responsible for such works of art as We Are Marshall and the Offspring's "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" video, kind of has a history of convincing respected, weird people to take on bullshit commercial projects. He is, after all, the guy who convinced Crispin Glover to appear in both Charlie's Angels movies. But can he convince Thom Yorke to make music for the Terminator Salvation soundtrack? McG, for one, thinks that maybe he can.

The forthcoming fourth installment in the Terminator movie series already features a score from former Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman, as MTV reports. But according to the Playlist, McG told an audience at the New York Comic Con last weekend that the score could use a little something extra. So McG has been talking with Yorke about the possibility of setting the Radiohead frontman up with Gustavo Santaolalla, the Argentinian composer who wrote the scores for movies like Amores Perros and Brokeback Mountain.

According to the Playlist, McG had this to say: "We talked about Gustavo getting together with Thom Yorke from Radiohead, which I thought would be very interesting. And they may still do a couple of sounds for the movie." A "couple of sounds." Right.

Admittedly, Terminator Salvation does look pretty badass in a Reign of Fire sort of way, discussed-to-death Christian Bale temper tantrum notwithstanding. It should, at least, have an easy time besting the utterly godawful Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, quite possibly the worst big-budget sequel ever made. And Yorke did show a nearly unprecedented tolerance for lame shit when Radiohead performed at last weekend's endless Grammy Awards ceremony.

According to a Radiohead rep, this is all just a rumor. In other words: no, it's not going to happen.

I'm just going to go ahead and say it: Cornelius is pretty cool, but he's even cooler for filling his MySpace Top 40 with cats. I can absolutely imagine him and his cat friends chilling at the bar, drinking milk, making meow-based beats. Pretty cool.

The Japanese master of sound released Sensurround-- a DVD chronicling his Sensuous Synchronized Show-- last year, but fans in California and Mexico can live the technicolor overload sans TV screens when he brings the tour around for a brief West Coast encore in May. As an added art-rocking bonus, equally odd (yet slightly less visually savvy) avant-weirdos Deerhoof join him on four Cali dates. (Deerhoof have no other dates scheduled right now.)

Not quite as cool: Cornelius lost the Best Surround Sound Album Grammy to Paavo Järvi & Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on Sunday. Robbed! Nevermind.

See the pretty colors, surround the sound:

San Diego noise-pop kid Wavves is at the top of his game right now. Smartly, Fat Possum, his label, has made the financially prudent decision to get his new album the fuck out there as soon as possible. Wavvves, won't be out on CD or vinyl until March 17, but iTunes has it right now. Check out the tracklist below. Dude seems to be kinda obsessed with goths.

Fat Possum has also released a new Wavves single today. "California Goths" b/w "Here's to the Sun" is for sale right now on Fat Possum's website. Half of the pressing is on pink vinyl, half of it on green. That's the cover above. And Fat Possum is giving away the first 300 copies for free to the first 300 people who buy the album digitally from their website, so get clicking, vinyl fetishists.

Wavves also has a ridiculous number of live shows coming up, including an appearance on the Pitchfork stage at the Primavera Sound fest, so invest in some earplugs and go nuts: