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Photo by Kathryn Yu

Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., and her fiancee, Exit frontman/Green Owl Records founder Benjamin Bronfman (formerly known as Benjamin Brewer), who welcomed their first child, a boy, into the world on Wednesday, February 11, 2009. Naturally, M.I.A. announced the birth via MySpace:

T O F A N S F R I E N D S O N F A M I L Y . M Y B A B Y I S H E R E
HAPPY VALENTINES!

SUNDAY NITE I CA M E HOME FROM THE GRAMMY'S STILL IN THE MOOD TO PARTY , I COUDA EASILY GONE OUT BUT I WENT HOME INSEAD , LUCKY I DID!! COZ MY EARLY STAGE LABOUR KICKED IN AROUND 2 AM .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfndz8pW9WY

MY BABY WAS BORN WEDNESDAY , HE IS HEALTHY , FINE , BEAUTIFUL AND THE MOST AMZING THING EVER ON THIS PLANET, OF COURSE IM HIS MUM!!!

ME AND BABY ARE PUTTING OUR TOUR DATES FOR 2010 TOGETHER
AND MAKING MIX TAPES
AND FIGURING OUT A WAY TO BREAK OUT OF THE HOSPITAL !

HOPEFULLY THE WORLD IS BEEN TICKING ALONG AND I AINT MISSED MUCH!

C U SOON ,

AND MY BABY BOY SAYZ HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We would like to extend a hearty congratulations to the new parents, and a hearty thank you to the baby, for waiting a few days and allowing us all to experience this.

This is one of 2009's big ones, kids. On May 26, Warp will release the long-awaited follow-up to Yellow House, the breakout album from Grizzly Bear, Brooklyn's finest purveyors of cavernous whisper-sigh experimental rock. Neoclassical composer Nico Muhly and Beach House singer Victoria Legrand both contributed.

Last week, we reported the title: Veckatimest, named after a small, uninhabited island off the coast of Massachusetts. And today, they've revealed the album cover (which can be viewed right up there) and tracklist (see below). Check back early next week for an interview with frontbear Ed Droste about the album.

The band has a busy year coming up. This weekend, they've got a New Yorker-sponsored show with (seriously) Gabriel Byrne coming up at Brooklyn's Galapagos Art Space. On February 28, they'll play the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, who will play some arrangements that Muhly wrote specifically for the show. Also on the radar: SXSW, Bonnaroo, and a to-be-announced nationwide club tour.

-- Dntel-- aka Jimmy Tamborello aka Jimmy Figurine aka the other dude in the Postal Service-- is cleaning out his closet. His new/old three-disc set Early Works for Me If It Works For You II hits April 14 via Phthalo. It features the first two Dntel albums, 1998's Early Works for Me If It Works for You and 1999's Something Always Goes Wrong, along with a bonus disc filled with previously unreleased material. Get ready to get lulled!

-- Fat Possum has struck a licensing deal with classic Memphis soul imprint Hi Records. What does this mean to you? How about remastered versions of three Al Green essentials-- Greatest Hits, I'm Still In Love With You, and Let's Stay Together-- all due March 31. It's about damn time. The Hi/Fat Possum brand is also working on new versions of Green's Gets Next to You, The Belle Album and Livin' for You, along with LPs by Otis Clay, Ann Peebles, Syl Johnson, O.V. Wright, and Willie Mitchell.

-- After last year's Love Will Reign Supreme covers EP charmed amorous bloggers all over the web, Mobius Band are back at it with Empire of Love, featuring revamped takes on Kanye's "Say You Will" and Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How It Feels" among other lovelorn tunes. Who needs a dozen roses when you have these guys doing TV on the Radio?! Also: it's free.

-- From the ashes of the Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves came Jaguar Love, whose 2008 debut album got a decent 6.8 grade on this very website. The trio is heading out on the road to support Nine Inch Nails in Australia later this month before coming back to the good old U.S.A. to tour with Ok Go in March. Hey, remember that Ok Go video with the dancing and treadmills? Good times.

The vinyl-fetishism virus continues to spread. British black-circle-spinners can feel pretty good about themselves ,because Fat Cat records is about to reissue two Sigur Rós albums on 180-gram DMM vinyl in the UK. On March 9, the label will release big, luxurious vinyl remasters of 1999's Ágætis Bryjun and 2002's ( ).

The Fat Cat people did the Direct Metal Mastering at Abbey Road Studios, and they're pulling out all the packaging stops for these joints: silver ink on heavyweight uncoated blue card for Ágætis Bryjun, heavyweight outer sleeve with die cut ( ) shape showing through to four interchangeable inner sleeves for ( ). I don't really know what any of that even means, but it sounds awesome. By the looks of things, people are going to spend as much time lovingly carressing these records as they are listening to them.

Those reissues will only be available in the UK or from the Fat Cat UK web page. But American listeners aren't entirely shit out of luck. Fat Cat is planning similarly deluxe American vinyl reissues of a couple of their other recent classics. No release date on these yet, but Animal Collective's 2004 album Sung Tongs and Max Richter's 2004 album The Blue Notebooks will soon get the full 180-gram DMM treatment. Fat Cat tells us to expect spring 2009 release dates for both.

Follow the dripping foot: The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson sang on Röyksopp's 2005 single "What Else Is There?" Danish director Martin de Thurah directed that song's video, which is probably one of the best clips of the decade. That is not an exaggeration: it's the sort of video Björk used to make. (In it, a floating model sings Karin's part, but the mysterious Swede does show up with a haunting scowl about two-thirds of the way through.)

So news of Andersson and de Thurah re-teaming for a new clip from Dreijer Andersson's Fever Ray project is oh so welcomed. De Thurah will direct the video for "When I Grow Up", a song in which Andersson sings about plant-sitting, facials, and boomerangs. It's not the most linear lyric. And de Thurah isn't the most linear lens man.

Here's his equally abstract-but-brilliant treatment: "That initial idea was something about something coming out of water-- something which was about to take form-- a state turning into something new. And a double headed creature not deciding which where to turn. But the idea had to take a simpler form, to let the song grow by itself. I remembered a photo I took in Croatia two years ago, a swimming pool with its shining blue color in a grey foggy autumn landscape." Don't worry, it will be better than Lady in the Water.

Here's an appropriately ominous still from the video, which should hit the internet soon:

More good Fever Ray news: Dreijer Andersson is going on tour. Sure, it's a brief, eight-date tour that doesn't reach beyond Scandinavia. But, hey, maybe this is the beginning. The last time I saw Andersson on stage, she was behind a screen and wearing a mask. Well, I think it was her. Either way, she killed.

-- Ever wonder what Unicorns co-founder Alden Penner has been up to since his old band went poof? We'll give you a hint: Clues. Yep, that's his new project's name. Penner and Clues partner Brendan Reed (formerly of Arcade Fire) are readying their self-titled debut album for a May 19 release on Constellation. Check out a sampler here. Interested parties may be chuffed to learn the two are heading out on tour later this month as well.

-- Cool dude NYC singer-songwriter Mike Bones has a new album out on Social Registry called A Fool for Everyone and now he's doing the gentlemanly thing by playing songs from it in bars and clubs across the United States, including many dates with Phosphorescent. Check out the dates here and watch his new video for lovely, crescendoing single "What I Have Left" here.

-- J Mascis is putting the (completely, completely amazing and awesome) Dinosaur Jr. reunion thing to the side for a minute to tour with his (less than completely, completely amazing and awesome) Sabbath-style band Witch, in which he plays drums, rather than guitar. They'll head out with Tee Pee Records buddies Earthless.

-- The first DVD from moody Temporary Residence instrumentalists Grails -- featuring live footage, videos and street preachers on roller skates-- is on its way April 7, whether you are ready or not. It's called Acid Rain and, based on the trailer, you are not ready. They'll also do a few California shows with James Blackshaw next week.

-- Former Electrelane guitarist Mia Clarke writes for this website on occasion, upping our collective coolness at least four notches. We appreciate it. She also still plays guitar on occasion, which is pretty rad too. Clarke recently teamed up with the Ex axe man Andy Moor for an improvisational album called Guitargument, which is out digitally on February 17 via File 13. Get an idea of what the thing sounds like at their MySpace.

With her native country in economic and social upheaval, Iceland's most famous pop iconoclast is doing her best to spur the country with hefty investments in environmentally responsible companies, among other well-thought-out tactics. (Not bad for a giggling pixie-sprite.) But Björk isn't the Prime Minster of Iceland (yet)-- there's only so much she can do. So she's back at doing that other thing she does well: re-purposing her own material in beautiful (and sometimes worthwhile) packages. Hence, the 2xCD/2xDVD Voltaic, a box set originally alluded to in our interview back in October.

This isn't some half-assed deluxe edition of a record you probably never loved in the first place-- in fact, the disappointing album from which this set stems isn't even represented in its original form. But even if much of Volta left you a bit cold, the tour was a top-notch, brass-band-enhanced spectacle, and it's well represented on Voltaic. The main draw: A live DVD taped in Paris and Reykjavík featuring a whole bunch of Volta songs that sounded a lot better live than on record, along with some old classics. Also: the long-rumored Live at Olympic Studios CD, recorded in London on June 25, 2007. The bundle is rounded out with a DVD filled with Volta's (admittedly sub par) videos and a CD filled with Volta's (refreshingly above par) remixes.

The package-- available in standard, deluxe, and deluxe vinyl editions-- is out in March, but you can pre-oder it now.

Despite their utterly ridiculous name, the Vancouver duo Japandroids don't make electroclash. Rather, they make shouty, jangled-up anthemic fuzz-rock the way their compatriots in the Constantines do. And real talk: The world could always use more bands who sort of sound like the Constantines.

So we're happy to report that Post-Nothing, Japandroids' first full-length, comes out soon. Unfamiliar will release it in North America on April 28, only on vinyl and digital download. Sorry, CD fetishists. But if you buy the vinyl, the download comes free with it.

And coming up over the next couple of months, the duo will play a few shows in Vancouver and Toronto.

Carnavas, the 2006 debut album from L.A. fuzz-poppers Silversun Pickups, met with a pretty subdued reaction around these parts, but it holds a special little place in this writer's heart. That album has, like, two really good songs on it, and considering how many bands manage zero really good songs per album, respect is due. Also, their "Lazy Eye" video was about the best thing to see heavy rotation on MTV2's "Subterranean" a couple of years back. I'm just saying.

In any case, I hope the effects-pedal abusers can manage a couple more really good songs on Swoon, their sophomore LP. Dangerbird will release Swoon on April 14.

Before the album's release, the band will unveil a couple of the new songs, "Panic Switch" and "Nice to Know You Work Alone", via one of those Guitar Hero: World Tour downloadable Track Packs. The Silversun Pickups Track Pack will also include one of those really good songs previously mentioned, the Carnavas single "Well Thought Out Twinkles". [Not a good way to avoid Smashing Pumpkins comparisons, guys. - Ed.]

Silversun Pickups are also partnering with Gibson/Epiphone to create a series of limited edition guitars that will be on display at various independent record stores on Record Store Day.

At the moment, the band only has one live date planned: April 17 at the Coachella Festival.

Photo by David Hill

Last September, the Kills' tour bus went missing. The UK scuzz-rock duo parted ways with their bus and its driver on September 26, believing he'd meet up with them again in Austin shortly afterward. But neither the bus nor the driver showed up in Austin, which sent Federal police off on a search through both the U.S. and Mexico. A couple of weeks later, police recovered the bus in a Los Angeles parking lot after a fan spotted it and called it in. Miraculously, all the band's gear was still on board. But the driver still eluded them.

Well, no longer. As the Kills reported in a MySpace blog post on Tuesday, driver Brian Berkenkemper was arrested in Miami last Friday for crimes that had nothing to do with the tour bus swipe:

"remember that guy who stole our bus last october?

"well, he's been arrested in Miami for some robbery shit, and for trying to sell public parking spaces for 5$. have a look at his mug on the miami-dade county jail website. good news is, he's alive. the other good news is, he's in jail in florida and he's bald."

Oh snap! The Miami-Dade Inmate Profile System's website proudly displays Berkenkemper's mugshot, and he is indeed bald. His crime is listed as "robbery by sudden snatching." That guy probably has some interesting stories.

In other Kills news, on April 14 Domino will release their Black Balloon EP in the U.S. (The rest of the world gets it March 23.) The EP will feature the Midnight Boom track of the same name and acoustic B-sides. The band will also spend the entire spring touring, and here's hoping they have better luck finding a driver.