As we reported on Saturday, one of the unlikely promotions for Kanye West’s Yeezus is a recreation of a memorable American Psycho scene with Scott Disick in Christian Bale’s role and Jonathan Cheban in Jared Leto’s role. It was screened at a listening party in Los Angeles last week, and is now online. Watch it below.

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Sonny & The Sunsets have delivered a quirky animated video for their track “Green Blood.” The tune comes from their most recent album, Antenna To The Afterworld, which is about space and death, but here they explore interplanetary romance. Watch for the Crystal Pepsi reference. Check it out below.

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Things took a bit of a turn for Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) in 2009, when he premiered “Island, IS,” the first single from Unmap, his debut album with the experimental rock outfit Volcano Choir. The song strayed from the stripped-down folk melancholy Vernon had become known for, setting his vocals over a quicker, stranger hypnotic loop.

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It was clear things would be ending better than they began when I showed up in Williamsburg for the last day of Northside Festival. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits thanks to a false weather forecast — we showed up on Sunday expecting more rain and got surprised with a pretty nice day. Not that it mattered once you got to the dark, dingy Cameo Gallery for a showcase culminating with Light Asylum‘s stunning performance. If you haven’t been to the Cameo Gallery it deserves a little bit of explanation. Walking in makes you feel like a character in Goodfellas as you move to the back of a crowded bar, go down a hallway past the kitchen and finally find an unmarked white door splotched in paint. Go through and you’re in another world. A small intimate space that’s dimly lit at best – it’s exactly the kind of venue you’d want to see a group like Light Asylum, whose music sounds like it was born in this sort of environment.

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Ruby Pins is the solo songwriting project of Lilian Maring, drummer for Grass Widow. On June 25, M’Lady’s Records will release her debut full-length, a haunting and carefully-crafted self-titled record written over the past three years. We’ve already heard the first single, “Chameleon.” Now here another cut, “Chariot.”

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Just over a minute into Yeezus, Kayne West is riding the malfunctioning-star-destroyer glitch-screams of “On Sight” when he poses a rhetorical question: “How much do I not give a fuck? Let me show you right now, ‘fore you give it up.” He repeats the question, as the screaming robots underneath him disappear into empty black space. Then, welling up like a chorus of angels, we hear a classic-level Kanye soul sample, one of those things that once made his music sound so life-affirming. It’s actually a gospel sample, a full choir pleading that “He’ll give us all we need,” their voices just slightly decayed, like they’re coming through an old speaker. And then that choir disappears just as abruptly, the robot roar returning, the laser-sounds pretty soon working like they’re fighting each other, like they’re pushing themselves so hard that they’re falling apart, while Kanye barks about dicks in mouths. He’s dangling his beloved old self before us, then snatching it back. A few songs later, as “New Slaves” — the defiant blast of wrath that weaponizes the so-self-conscious ambivalent consumerism that Kanye was doing way back on “All Falls Down” — is fading out, soul-sample Kanye comes back, cooing that he can’t lose in Auto-tune over celestial strings while Frank Ocean answers him back. That’s where the old Kanye becomes triumphant. He’s the vehicle for the new Kanye assuring us, ever so briefly, that these forces that he sees assembled against him aren’t enough to drag him down. It’s, once again, a rare note of peace in a dark and violent album.

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Despite an initial April release date, M.I.A.’s fourth studio full-length, Matangi, has been temporarily shelved for allegedly being “too positive.” Over the weekend, we heard a snippet of skittering but spritely and “Me And Bobby McGee”-referencing new cut “Bring The Noize” but it was debuted in full on Zane Lowe’s BBC 1 show this afternoon. She told Lowe on-air that she keeps handing in her album, but the label will not accept it. It is, however, slated for release in the fall. Check out “Bring The Noize” below.

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At a blacktop lot in McCarren Park on Saturday, a concert plugged along and the conversation turned to befuddlement: “Is this really a free show?” What amounted to the headlining sets of the fifth annual Northside Festival was a well-executed affair. The lines moved swiftly (besides the one for free ice cream sandwiches) and the crowd was never overwhelming. The two main acts played superb sets. All on the house.

The Walkmen capped the evening and were as professional as their reputation would indicate. The quintet stormed out of the gate with three of their best songs. “The Rat” was as charged as ever, still a blistering revelation and further proof of its continuing life as the band’s standard. The backbone was stout drumming from one of the hardest working men in show biz, Matt Barrick. “Stranded” was poignant, frontman Hamilton Leithauser lamenting his way through the forlorn lyrics while horns lilted into the picture to his left.

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Foals last worked with director Nabil Elderkin on the seriously NSFW “Late Night” video. The band and director are paired up again for the “Bad Habit” clip, which is about as objectionable as the sleeve art for Rush’s Hemispheres. But a tasteful nude is still a nude, so be warned. “Bad Habit” is far and away my favorite track on Foals’ recent album, Holy Fire. It’s a rich, beautiful electro ballad with soaring climaxes and thousands of perfectly arranged near-microscopic details. It’s a song that I usually play three or four times in a row every time I listen to it, because its chorus gives me such an endorphin charge. Nabil (whose video portfolio includes Kanye West, Justin Timberlake, and Bon Iver, among others) gives the vid a vast, painterly feel, which is absolutely warranted by the music. Watch.

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Yale alumni San Fermin craft family drama with their video for “Sonsick.” The chamber-pop track sounds easy-breezy, but the lyrics are just as heavy as the visuals. You feel the emotional pull from singers Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe (of band Lucius), especially in the multi-layered hook. Check it out below and purchase here.

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been low-level fascinated with the idea that Mac Miller, the goonish Pittsburgh rapper, somehow embraced his inner stoner weirdo and found a way to get good. His recent collabs with Flying Lotus, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt, Jay Electronica, and Schoolboy Q have all been varying degrees of strong, and his new album Watching Movies With The Sound Off also has appearances from Action Bronson and Tyler, The Creator, which would further support the idea that maybe this guy is worth caring about now. This Yeezus Premature Evaluation isn’t going to write itself, so I haven’t had time to test out the theory yet, but you can! Because Watching Movies With The Sound Off is now streaming at Miller’s website. Hear it here.

Watching Movies With The Sound Off is out 6/18 on Rostrum.

We’ve been playing the hell out Kylesa’s new record, Ultraviolet, around here — it was our Album Of The Week the last week of May, and then it made our list of the Top 25 Albums Of 2013 So Far. “Unspoken” was the first track to premiere from the album, and it’s absolutely one of the record’s highlights, and now it’s got a video. It’s an animated clip, directed by Brodie Rush and illustrated by Tyson Schroeder; it’s bleak and dark and fiery, and the images of dreamlike apocalypse nicely match the churning downtuned guitars and climactic vocal rushes. Watch.

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Chicago soul maven Mavis Staples will release her second Jeff Tweedy-produced album, One True Vine, next week. We’ve already heard her cover of Funkadelic’s “Can You Get To That” and the even funkier “I Like The Things About Me,” but the whole thing is ready to preview now. Check it out over at NPR.

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On their first two albums, the young Chicago trio Smith Westerns moved from garage-rock scrappiness to glam-rock hauteur, and now they’ve moved onto the gentle but assured grandeur of prime big-money Britpop. Soft Will, the band’s third album, arrives next week, and it brings the band close to the sweep of, say, the Verve’s Urban Hymns, or that one Longpigs album that went so cruelly overlooked. We’ve already posted the tracks “Varsity,” “3AM Spiritual,” and “Idol,” and now the whole album is streaming over at NPR. Do yourself a favor and go listen to it.

Soft Will is out 6/25 on Mom + Pop.

Last week, Adult Swim kicked off this summer’s Singles Series with “36″ Chain,” the new track from El-P and Killer Mike’s Run The Jewels project. Today, they follow it up with “Barbie Jeep,” the latest from the Florida rapper Kitty, formerly Kitty Pryde. Hot Sugar produced this one, and it’s a sidelong dance track about not being able to dance, one that also works as a put-down. Download it below.

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This year’s Bonnaroo curators covered important bases in terms of top-level talent: from iconic boomer-fare like Paul McCartney and Tom Petty, to iconic R&B fare like R. Kelly, to iconic hipster/hippie fare (a Bonnaroo speciality) in Animal Collective. And the undercard was ripe, too, with strong names from most every genre over four days on the ‘Roo family farm. You could focus on bands like Baroness, or Death Grips, or Nas, or Edward Sharp. Which is not to say you should focus on every band, but as a New Yorker once said, the world is yours (is yours is yours).

In Centeroo, the festival’s central marketplace, folks danced to a dubstep remix of Sublime’s “Santeria.” Molly was everywhere, but it was most especially with the ripped kid wearing a shirt that said “MOLLY MONSTER,” who took the xx’s midnight set to announce loudly “I’m on probation, too. Guess what? I’M ON EVERYTHING.” Welcome to Bonnaroo 2013.

Take our word for it: The shows were great! The experience was immersive and things were remarkably organized, midday and midnight alike, in that way that makes Bonnaroo a special American festival. And so, onstage, many special things happened. A quick rundown of some memories:

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Black Up, the first full-length from Seattle art-rap enigmas Shabazz Palaces, is two years old now, but they’ve only just released a video for the album track “An Echo From The Hosts That Profess Infinitum.” The stark black-and-white clip, from director Joris Grelet, stars a pair of stylish masked ninja figures, guys who wield katanas and molotov cocktails and who dress with more flair than anyone you know. Watch it below.

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Will Sheff, frontman for literate Texan indie band Okkervil River, has lately been busying himself with the DIY synthpop project Lovestreams, but his main band comes roaring back in a couple of months with a new album called The Silver Gymnasium. This morning, we get to hear our first taste of the album: A slow-building, piano-led track called “It Was My Season.” The lyric video for the song shows a lady turning on an old projector in a dusty auditorium somewhere, and you can watch it and hear the song below.

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Later this summer, Mark Kozelek, the mordant/funny/depressive driving force behind Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon will release his third album of 2013, after the covers record Like Rats and the Album Leaf collab Perils From The Sea. This one is a full-length collab with Desertshore, the band led by former Red House Painters guitarist Phil Carney; Kozelek’s served as a member of the band for their last two albums, but this time around, he’s leading it. The album is simply called Mark Kozelek & Desertshore, and we’ve already posted its “Mariette” video. Yesterday, for Father’s Day, Kozelek wrote a short piece for the New York Times website about his father and about “Brothers,” his new Mark Kozelek & Desertshore song. The song, which is seven minutes of placid pianos and powerful words, is about Kozelek’s father, and about Kozelek’s father’s brothers, all of whom are dead. Listen to it here.

Mark Kozelek & Desertshore is out 8/20 on Caldo Verde.

I’m not sure it’s possible to steal Kanye West’s thunder at this point, but if it is, his buddy Jay-Z just did it. Just as last night’s NBA Finals game was going into halftime, Samsung aired a three-minute commercial that centered entirely around Jay and some famous friends at work in the studio. The commercial doubled as an announcement that Jay has a new album called Magna Carta Holy Grail, his first solo effort since 2009′s Blueprint 3, coming in a couple of weeks. Jay and Samsung are giving the album away free, three days early, to anyone who downloads a Samsung Galaxy app.

The commercial, which you can view below, almost works as a sequel to the studio scenes in Jay’s concert/Black Album documentary Fade To Black. It shows Jay working with Timbaland, with Pharrell, with Swizz Beatz, and with a magnificently reclined Rick Rubin, all of them seemingly in the same room at the same time. In the video, you can hear bits of music and see Jay in something like his fabled Rain Man writing-trance state. Watch it below.

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“Open Eyes” is a song by Quilt that appears on the A-side of the band’s recent split with MMOSS, New Hampshire Freaks. Below, watch a new video for the song. It was shot on 16mm film, and plays with lightness and darkness in striking ways. The “Open Eyes” video was directed by Kim and Luis Arnias. The duo also directed Quilt’s video for “Young Gold,” from their 2011 debut for Mexican Summer. Quilt just recorded a second record in Brooklyn, which is very exciting.

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Brooklyn’s Celestial Shore release their debut full-length 10x this fall with Hometapes and Local Singles Records. We’ve already heard the first single, “Valerie.” Here’s an equally mesmerizing second track from the album, “Stairs Under Stars.” I am seriously psyched to hear the rest of the record; the band’s 2012 split cassette with Shopping Spree continues to be one of my most frequently played tapes.

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Superjam is an annual tradition at Bonnaroo, and this year the fest hosted three of them. One was led by Jim James and John Oates, with appearances by R. Kelly, Billy Idol, Larry Graham, and Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes. R. Kelly covered Sam Cooke. Billy Idol covered T. Rex. Check out some videos below.

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Earlier this year, Western Mass trio Young Adults released a new EP, Born In ’91, a noisy punk album full of shoegaze guitars and shout-a-long hooks. Back in February, we heard the title track. Now, the band has a video for the EP’s third cut, “Spectre,” produced by Loroto. It’s a cheeky commentary on stale office culture, corporate branding, the numbness induced by social media, and general societal constructs regarding success and normalcy. Check it out below.

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Beady Eye, a/k/a Oasis without Noel Gallagher, played The Voice UK last night. Check out footage of “Second Bite Of The Apple” below. And in case you missed it, check out the album version as well. The band’s second LP BE is out now.

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