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Photo by Ben Rayner

Lady Sovereign will return next year with her sophomore album, the follow-up to 2006's Public Warning!. The record is called Jigsaw, and all the songs are about the Saw movie franchise. Kidding, but that is the album's title.

Lady Sovereign will release Jigsaw via her new label, Midget Records, in partnership with EMI, on April 7 (April 6 in the UK). It includes collaborations with Dr. Luke (who produced "Love Me or Hate Me"), Spank Rock collaborator Benny Blanco, and Medasyn. She's currently offering a taste of the record over at her MySpace in the form of "I Got You Dancing", a squelchy, synthesized (and Auto-Tuned) track that sounds like an outtake from Dizzee Rascal's Showtime.

In a statement, Lady Sov called "I Got You Dancing" "an early Christmas gift" and said this about Jigsaw: "The album is the next chapter. It's a massive leap forward for mankind!!!"

Photo by Nilina Mason-Campbell

Because, after all, the number 2, followed by 11 zeroes, would make for a truly lousy album title, the rabblerousing Black Lips are calling their new record 200 Million Thousand. (That kind of reminds me of "the voice of this generation of this decade." - Ed.)

The 14-track follow-up to last year's excellent Good Bad Not Evil-- including sure-to-be-hits "Drugs" and "I Saw God"-- arrive from Vice Records February 24, just as the road-ready Lips are getting back into the swing of touring. There's a brief UK run in February followed by quite a while on the road in the States through the late winter and early fall, including a stint down in Austin for SXSW where they'll once again put on 200 million thousand shows.

The innovative, enigmatic, and vaguely creepy portable loop-playing device known as the Buddha Machine will return this week in a new incarnation. Buddha Machine 2.0 comes in three new colors (burgundy, gray, and brown) and features nine new loops plus a pitch-bend function ("like a whammy bar for your Buddha box!" according to the website).

BM 2.0 (BM! #2! The poop jokes write themselves!) is already available in Europe, and FM3 will release it December 9 in North America. Just in time to use it to convince your kids/younger relatives that their stockings are possessed!

Pictures of the new Buddha Machine are below.

Bonus: With a little help from party guy Jason Forrest and software developers Agile Partners, FM3 have turned the original Buddha Machine into an iPhone/iPod touch app you can snag right here.

Major General that he is, Hold Steady keyboardist and natural born star Franz Nicolay will lead the charge around the States in January. It's quite a little whirlwind tour Nicolay has crafted in support of his solo debut, particularly when you consider that the Hold Steady are on the road throughout December and February. But you don't achieve the rank of general by being a major wuss, you know?

Franz's Major General is due from Fistolo January 13, while the Hold Steady are due in Sheffield, England Sunday night. Note that the Counting Crows' European tour, which the Hold Steady were to open a few dates, has been back to May, so that somewhat unlikely pairing is off, for the time being anyway.

Designer, songwriter, and recent Asthmatic Kitty signee DM Stith's got an EP coming tomorrow (December 9) on his new label, and a few pretty impressive pals helping him put his best foot forward.

The five-song Curtain Speech EP is boosted by appearances from Sufjan Stevens, My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, and Rafter, among other Asthmatic Kitty luminaries. And just in case you weren't aware this crew is tight as all get out, Stith also returns Ms. Worden's favor on a forthcoming MBD remix EP.

What size Motown 50th anniversary compilation would you like: small, medium, or large? Because there are three comps coming out in the next couple months to commemorate the occasion, and other than slightly distinctive organizing principles, the main difference between each one is length (and price).

First up is the largest compilation. Motown/UMe will release Motown: The Complete No. 1's worldwide on December 8 and in the U.S. on December 9. The Complete No. 1's is exactly what it sounds like: a compilation of every chart-topper the label has released, but not only in the U.S. These are all the songs that have topped charts around the world at any time, plus the handful of songs originally recorded by Motown artists that reached #1 in cover versions. The compilation is ordered chronologically, starting with the Miracles' early 1960s hit "Shop Around" and ending with Erykah Badu's "Bag Lady" from 2000.

The Complete No. 1's has pretty sweet packaging too: 10 discs contained in five digipaks, all housed in a replica of "Hitsville U.S.A.", the original Motown headquarters. The package also contains a small photo book, track annotations, and an essay by Smokey Robinson. Check the mammoth tracklist here.

The medium-sized compilation will follow in the UK via UMTV on January 12, the exact date of Motown's 50th anniversary. Motown 50 is a collection of 50 tracks chosen in a worldwide online poll plus 11 covers by Motown artists thrown in for good measure.

Finally, the most humbly sized package arrives the very next day. It's a 25-track collection called NOW That's What I Call Motown (for real), and is indeed part of Universal/Sony/EMI's whole NOW That's What I Call Music! deal.

Remember, these are all in addition to Hip-O Select's recent The Complete Motown Singles series, not to mention the documentary and stage musical Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr. recently mentioned to Billboard.com. So. much. Motown.

Live music on T.V. this week:

Monday, December 8:

CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: the Duke Spirit
Syndicated: The Ellen DeGeneres Show: Beyonce
FUEL TV: The Daily Habit: Aesop Rock (rerun)

Tuesday, December 9:

CURRENT: La Blogotheque: Fleet Foxes, Emily Jane White
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live!: Common
SYNDICATED: The Martha Stewart Show: Rufus Wainwright
FUEL TV: The Daily Habit: Man Man (rerun)
NBC: Late Night With Conan O'Brien: the Gaslight Anthem

Wednesday, December 10:

SUNDANCE: Spectacle: Elvis Costello With...: Lou Reed
CBS: Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Tokyo Police Club
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Loudon Wainwright III
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live!: Zooey Deschanel, Adele

Thursday, December 11:

CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Bon Iver
NBC: The Tonight Show With Jay Leno: the Cure
Syndicated: The Ellen DeGeneres Show: Common and Cee-Lo
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live!: Snow Patrol

Saturday, December 13:

NBC: Saturday Night Live: Kanye West
PBS: Austin City Limits: Crowded House (rerun)

Don't forget to vote in the 2008 Pitchfork Readers Poll! This is your last chance-- the poll closes tomorrow, Sunday, December 7, at 11:59 p.m. Central Time. So go ahead and tell us your favorite albums and tracks of the year, who put on the best live show, who was the best new band and who was the most exciting reunion, and which albums were the most overrated and the most underrated.

We'll publish the results on December 12-- stay tuned!

While you're over at SurveyMonkey clicking buttons, we're hoping you'll also take our Readers Survey, telling us a little about you are and what you're into. If you complete the survey and give us your email address at the end, you'll be entered to win the 2xCD compilation The Sound of the Smiths and the 4xCD New Order box set Retro. Both sets come courtesy of Rhino, big thanks to them for the assist. 

So what are you waiting for? Go vote!

Photo by Kathryn Yu

M.I.A. is just bursting with anticipation for February 8. (Sorry, bad joke.) Sure, that's the night we'll find out if she wins that unlikely (but totally deserved!) Record of the Year Grammy, which is cool and everything. But that's not all that's slated to go down that day.

In a post on her MySpace blog titled "BABY + GRAMMY .......", the preggers superstar announced that that baby she's creating is due February 8, the very same day as the Grammys are handed out in a ceremony at L.A.'s Staples Center. "Either way I figured I'll win," she writes, "but OMG if I get it, I will never diss the Grammys ever again!" Sure, until Steely Dan's Spyro Gyra covers album sweeps the thing two years from now.

M.I.A. notes that she's "in the studio on the grind," and her story checks out; she's got that new Interscope imprint, N.E.E.T., which will issue the physical version of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack (on which M.I.A. makes several appearances) December 23. She's also working on Rye Rye's debut album, which will also be released by N.E.E.T.

Photo by Jon Behm

Sorry, Rage Against the Machine fans. Despite their successful reunion shows, the beloved agitators have "no plans" to record a new album, according to a Billboard interview with guitarist Tom Morello.

"We've had a wonderful year and a half of playing shows, and I don't see any reason to not play more shows," said Morello. "The thing is there's only so many hours in the musical day, and mine are very occupied right now."

Specifically, those hours are occupied recording and touring as the Nightwatchman, which Morello called "my principal musical focus, as I see it, for the remainder of my life... This music [is] as important to me as any music I've ever been involved in. It really encapsulates everything I want to do as an artist."

The Nightwatchman told Billboard he is considering using his touring band, Freedom Fighter Orchestra, on the follow-up to this year's The Fabled City. He is also in the planning stages of a collaborative project with the Coup's Boots Riley, with whom he is currently touring.

Of course, no good conversation with Morello could end without talk of politics, and Billboard got the guitarist to say this of Barack Obama's election to the highest office in the U.S.:

"On one hand I'm hopeful a new day has dawned, but on the other hand I really do believe that the system under which we live is fundamentally a one corporate party state with two right wings. We still have two unjust wars, a horrendous financial crisis, a gross disparity between rich and poor, and the environment sliding into the abyss. All those things have yet to be confronted. It's important for us to address those issues and continue the struggle, which the Nightwatchman will certainly do."

Morello also took the interview as an opportunity to expound upon the "eerie similarities" between himself and Obama, such as "both having Kenyan fathers and white Midwestern mothers and having attended Harvard and...being devastatingly handsome." Great. Good talk.