Perhaps with slightly less budget than the new Muppets movie, is the documentary, Being Elmo. It is, quite simply, a documentary about Elmo’s person, Kevin Clash. It’s been reviewing well at the ‘fests and looks pretty exceptional.

Thom Yorke has seemingly been everywhere lately. Amongst his many many, many projects he did a couple of tracks with Modeselektor. The German duo have been doing their thing since the 90′s and Thom’s been a big fan.The collab turned out nicely and the track “Shipwreck” now has a video for your visual and auditory enjoyment.

Aesop Rock, too, has been around since the 90′s. My good friend, Kai, turned me on to him a long while back and I have been hooked ever since. He has a distinct voice, both in sound and style, that draws me right in. He’s supposedly working on a new album but also is a third of Hail Mary Mallon, along with Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz. If you are a fan of Aesop Rock, it’s not a stretch to say you probably will also be a fan of HMM.

Was there ever any doubt Duck Sauce would be huge? Armand Van Helden and A-Trak. Together. Yup, no doubts there. “Barbara Streisand” was on Glee for crying out loud. Now, their latest vid for “Big Bad Wolf” is very NSFW but the thing is hilarious.

The vid from Death Cab for “Stay Young, Go Dancing” is pretty okay. While their last vid for “You Are A Tourist,” was pretty great, I still think my favourite video of theirs is for “A Movie Script Ending“. Still love me some Death Cab though.

I’ve never been super keen on Ryan Adams but I am enjoying the vid for “Lucky Now”. The song itself sounds like a hundred other songs. It’s one of those very comforting tunes and, when coupled with the soothing black & white video, takes me to a quiet place in my mind. Good for a Sunday.

Matt & Kim sure have been busy! They’ve been touring, playing on Jimmy Fallon, and collaborating with Soulja Boy and  top party guy extraordinaire, Andrew W.K.. The vid for their Converse collab is a zombie dance party in the morgue and looks, as usual, like it was a ton of fun to shoot. It’s a great track and vid, and I bet it was an awesome excuse for Matt & Kim to have a chance to party serious with Andrew W.K..

The first track from the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers album was released about a month ago and now it has a video. The boys continue to look good and have a grand ol’ time on the roof à la the Beatles and U2. Love that Anthony Kiedis is sporting an OFF! hat! The new album hits in just over a week on the 29th.

The new album from the Rapture, In the Grace of Your Love, comes out on September 5th, and unlike the apocalyptic version, this Rapture will actually deliver. But if you’re all antsy in your pantsy you can listen to it, in full, below.

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to see the Decemberists on their Hazards of Love tour. It still stands as one of the best shows I have seen and they are actually in town again tomorrow night. While I am not fortunate enough to be seeing them this time around, they did release their latest video which completely made my day. Not only is it a new video from the Decemberists, but it is also based on Infinite Jest. It is fantastic and also directed by Michael Schur, who is partially responsible for a television show called Parks and Recreation. You should watch both the video and the show. NPR’s got you covered for the video portion, the rest is up to you.

I am one of the many fans still anxiously awaiting the Arrested Development movie. Not the movie about Mr. Wendal in Tennessee that owes you a watermelon, but the movie about the Bluth family. It seems like every year the rumour gets revived and rekindles my hope. It’s movie blue balls, is what it is. But I know I’m not the only one going through it, though I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.

This somehow helps though! Some lovely fellow named Matt De Lanoy recreated the Bluth universe in Lego for Brickworld this year. (He also previously did New New York from Futurama, which you can see here.) Needless to say, this guy pretty much rules.

It may be the upcoming the Muppets, (November 23rd; very excited,) but there has been a noticeable increase in Muppet-related videos on the interwebs lately. Here is the latest – Cookie Monster doing Tom Waits’s “God’s Away On Business”.

Okay so the thing is, I friggin’ love the Muppets. As previously mentioned, they really hold a special place in my heart and I am SO excited about this new movie. It feels like the old Muppets again. I mean, it’s the old crew getting back together again, but you know what I mean. The movies have not been the same for a long time now and upon watching the trailer, I got kind of emotional. It just feels… right. I just cannot wait for this!

Did you enjoy that? Did you say to yourself, “Man, if I had some of those Beastie Boys action figures, I would steal my sister’s Barbie Beach Cruiser and have them act out a buddy flick!”¹ If you had that thought and have $750 on hand, you can own your very own set! Yes, you read that right. Seven-hundred fifty dollars. But before you soil your last pair of clean undies², all proceeds are going to three charities who work with kids who have cancer. Plus they come with a lot of stuff like different outfits, decals and hands. Hands, man. And, as the site states, “these are some real limited edition, explicit, bottle service/ v.i.p. type items“. I have to say, they look pretty awesome. Or dope? Do people still say that?

MTV just turned 30 over the weekend and it’s like the child actor of TV stations. It started out fun and cute and a bit kooky. It did its thing and we loved it. Then once it hit its teens, that’s when the trouble started. It decided to start dabbling in shows that had nothing to do with music – shows of people’s actual lives. And since then it’s all been downhill. MTV needs to be on Intervention, it’s now a crack whore – missing teeth and scabby. I would be one of those weeping loved-ones, reading my letter to MTV and telling it how much I miss the times we had and how I don’t even know it anymore, begging for it to get into treatment and be the channel I loved all those years ago. Remember the day you were born, MTV?

There is a reason for this little rant. Lately I have been finding that a lot of videos have been premiering exclusively on MTV.com. I have a couple of issues with this. One – it’s region restricted, so I can never watch the goddamn vids. (Hulu, I’m glaring in your direction too and YouTube, you’re headed down this slippery slope as well.) Two – why give an “exclusive premiere” to a station that barely plays music, despite having “music” in their name? Do people ever watch MTV for videos anymore? How do you find them?

Anyway, the cameo-heavy video for Best Coast‘s “Our Deal” is one of those “exclusive” videos I was referring to. The only place I could find it that didn’t link to the MTV video, constantly deny me, was a site in Chinese, so sorry about that. It’s pretty much Romeo & Juliet with better makeup, hair products and leather jackets. Maeby from Arrested Development is in it, as well as Donald Glover. I only know the actress playing the lead because she played Jack Donaghy’s young nemesis on 30 Rock. Anyway, thank you, China! And as for you, MTV, I hope that one day we can be friends again but I can’t watch you as long as you continue being a whore.

¹ I refuse to use that term that rhymes with “fromance”.
² I know; I was too late. My apologies. If you don’t have time to do some laundry before work, just wear a bathing suit under your clothes. I won’t judge you. I promise.

Then later in the week I see this Sesame Street mashup of “Sure Shot”. Oscar as MCA, Grover as Ad-Rock, and Cookie Monster as Mike D is pretty great, but it doesn’t beat the Kermits for me. Still good stuff though.

I often wonder if Matt & Kim ever get upset. They’re always smiling and seem like they’re just having so much FUN all the time. It’s pretty infectious, which was apparent when they played Fallon this week. The Roots definitely caught it!

Kindest Lines is relatively new on my radar, but I am enjoying what I have heard so far. They are out of New Orleans, which seems to have quite a music scene brewing lately, and are dark but dancey. Check out their debut album, Covered In Dust, which has been out for just over a month or so now, and they will soon be touring with Xiu Xiu, so check them out if they turn up in your ‘hood.

Not new on anyone’s radar is LCD Soundsystem, and some fine individual has remade their video for “All My Friends” in Lego. It is pretty great. You can compare it to the original here if you like to do that sort of thing.

It seems as if documentaries on bands are popping up more and more often lately. Beats Rhymes & Life, the doc on A Tribe Called Quest, was directed by Michael Rapaport which seemed like an odd pairing. That one is in limited release around the US, but sadly, I don’t think it has made it north of the border just yet. I would love to see this one and have actually considered road tripping to go see it, but I’m sure the internet will eventually throw me a bone.

In a more logical pairing, there is the Pearl Jam doc from Cameron Crowe that will be premiering at TIFF this year. I was a big-time Pearl Jam fan back in the day. They were the band I most connected with in high school. A friend of mine worked at a surf shop and got to deliver a custom board to Eddie once and they became surfing buddies. Obviously, I thought my friend was the coolest ever.

Watching the trailer brought back a lot of memories. You have to admit, Pearl Jam is pretty amazing. There aren’t many bands of that era that have survived this long that are still making music together; I have a lot of respect for them as a result. Looking forward to checking this one out too.

You wouldn’t think the White House would be up on internet memes, but I guess if that meme involves Rick Astley, they might be. You also wouldn’t think the White House would Rickroll someone via twitter, but that totally happened last week. Good one, sir!

My cable/internet went out last week and I popped in my The Work of Director Mark Romanek DVD from the Director’s Series. I have the full series, with the exception of Chris Cunningham, (his vids are too creepy to watch repeatedly,) and it was a fantastic flashback. This led to a conversation later in the week with a co-worker about the genius that is Rick Rubin, then RHCP let loose their first single from their next album, I’m With You, which also happens to be produced by Mr. Rubin. Full circle – you like that? Anyway, you can check the track over here. If you liked them before, you will probably still like them, despite the latest of their guitarist change-ups.

Pictureplane is one of those acts that sounds like a band, but is actually just one guy. His last album, Dark Rift, was solid and his new album, Thee Physical, comes out on Tuesday. I highly suggest you scoop it up in your preferred format. It is, as they say, “good shit”.

Hot damn, I wish Big Freedia actually did a Bounce class. The way she shakes it seems to defy the laws of physics and she passes along her sweet skill set in the vid for “Excuse”.

Anyhow, they now have a video for their track, “Up, Up, Up”. It’s a pretty simple one and it features tilt-shift and some spaciness, courtesy of a green screen.

Mates of State are just straight-up awesome. They are an awesome band, but also awesome parents and awesome human beings, in general. I still have one of the “rock people” that their daughter, Magnolia, made and sold while they were on tour to raise money for kids who didn’t have stuff. It’s not as glittery as it was when I first got it and the eyes(?) have fallen off, but it’s just another testament to their awesomeness in my book. Their next album, Mountaintops, will be coming out on September 13th and will most likely also be awesome. Awesome.

And in case you were wondering, the future still looks crazy, fantastic and is not as far away as we think. I want to go to there.

Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah will finally be releasing their next album, Hysterical, on September 20th, (September 12th overseas). This album has been 4 years in the making and I really wasn’t sure what to expect after all this time. But they have released the first single and it sounds a lot fuller and melodic, and less frantic. I am officially stoked.

And speaking of flashbacks, this was from back in that era. I don’t remember what it was for, but I do remember laughing my ass off when they posted the audio clip on their site. It was one of the things that really sealed Dave Grohl into my “awesome” file.

My friend, Nappy, is a bang-up PR lady. One of the first lunchtime conversations I remember having with her was about how she loves Sister Wives and now, every time I hear this song I think of her. I don’t know very much about Alex Winston, other than that she is from Michigan and one of her previous singles was used in some European ad campaigns. Good track though. Maybe we will learn more about her at some point, but for now she will remain cloaked in mystery.

There has been a bit of a revival of darker new-wave synth-pop over the last few years and Cold Cave has been one of the more popular bands on that ride. Sometimes I overthink my motivations for liking these bands and this music, but then I realize that it doesn’t matter what my motivations are – I enjoy it and that’s all that should really matter.

Copenhagen/Brooklyn’s Alcoholic Faith Mission have been the darlings of many a festival over the last few years. Here’s their vid for “Legacy” which is probably the sweetest video about death involving a mouse you have seen.

And if you’re not one of the nearly 1 million people who have seen this, Vegan Black Metal Chef is pretty hilarious.