This year has already had a lot of great new music, and it’s only continuing to add and promise more all the time. Today, after releasing a new single last week that had the internets abuzz, Arcade Fire announced that their next full-length album will be called The Suburbs, and will drop August 3rd in the United States. This is their first album since 2007′s Neon Bible, and it’s easily one of the most anticipated records of the year.

Here are the so-far released tracks, the single “The Suburbs” and its b-side “Month of May.” Some of the comments I’ve been seeing haven’t been too high on these tracks, and I’ll admit I’m not as in love with them as I am with Funeral or Neon Bible, but we’ll see. I’ve only heard them through a time or two. What do you think?

“The Suburbs”: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
“Month of May”: Arcade Fire – Month of May

You can pre-order The Suburbs on Arcade Fire’s website or presumably through the music purveyor of your choice.

(via lots of places, but primarily Pitchfork and One Thirty BPM)

Watch the video for the insanely popular “Fireflies” by Owl City (or at least as much as you can without having to go outside to throw yourself in front of a bus):

Then enjoy this.

Nothing I can really add to this video other than technical garbage. You can find all of the details about this new device over at the official Google Blog. I guess all I have to say is, “it’s about time!”

Self-described “Keane purists” have been groaning for a while now about their push towards a new sound. There has been an even louder collective groan over their newest single, which infuses hip hop with their signature Britpop piano rock.

I am here to say that all of these naysayers are wrong. “Stop for a Minute,” which feature Canadian hip hop artist K’naan, is absolutely, positively one of Keane’s best songs in their fifteen year career. I whole-heartedly support the evolution of this band and the new direction that they have been taking. It’s bloody brilliant.

Their latest album is an EP titled Night Train, which was recorded during their tour for their 2008 album Perfect Symmetry. Check it out and keep an open mind, because it’s awesome.

A strange thing happened to me in my dream. I was rapt into the Seventh Heaven. There sat all the gods assembled. As a special dispensation I was granted the favor to have one wish. “Do you wish for youth,” said Mercury, “or for beauty, or power, or a long life; or do you wish for the most beautiful woman, or any other of the many fine things we have in our treasure trove? Choose, but only one thing!” For a moment I was at a loss. Then I addressed the gods in this wise: “Most honorable contemporaries, I choose one thing — that I may always have the laughs on my side.” Not one god made answer, but all began to laugh. From this I concluded that my wish had been granted and thought that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste: for it would surely have been inappropriate to answer gravely: your wish has been granted.

-from Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard

Wampa rug. Don’t know what’s better, the idea of having sex on this thing or the prospect of it being with slave outfit Leia…

Summer is almost upon us and with it a plethora of nights filled with books thanks to the lack of good television. This is the time of year when show seasons end and we enter the depths of reruns, syndication, and perhaps catching up on what we may have missed over the last few months.

It’s not all bad though. True Blood is set to return on June 13th but there’s something else to get excited about, especially if you’re a fan of sweeping epics. If that’s the case, things don’t get much better than Sergio Mimica-Gezzan’s adaptation of Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, the story of the building of a cathedral in Kingsbridge, England.

I first caught wind of the book and the production when doing some poking around Matthew Macfadyen’s upcoming projects and stumbled on what seemed like a promising one. The eight part miniseries with a budget of $40 million dollars, was definitely destined to look good but I was more excited to see it thanks to a cast that includes Ian McShane, Eddie Redmayne, Hayley Atwell, Alison Pill, Rufus Sewell, Donald Sutherland and Gordon Pinsent it’s certainly one I wasn’t going to miss. Thankfully, the trailer suggests that this could very well be the next John Adams.

Pillars of the Earth premieres on Starz on July 23th.

Trailer after the break!

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As I strapped on my iPod the other day for a long, not so sunny bike ride, I figured Led Zeppelin would do as well as anything else (or better) for this day of musicness. I’ve been listening to Zep since about the 7th grade and really got into them in college. I can’t really stand any of their later stuff with all the synth and pianos. But everything up through “Physical Graffiti” is at worst, very solid or stellar at best.

Two of these stellar albums are “Led Zeppelin IV” and “Houses of the Holy.” On this particular day I decided to get the Led out with “Houses” and while listening made a gut level statement to myself that this is my favorite Zep album. Then instantly I had pangs of regret over that silent statement as I remembered how awesome “ZOSO” (“Zep IV”) is.

So now I’m caught in a dilemma: is “ZOSO” a better record, or is it the masterpiece that is “Led Zeppelin IV?” I’ve decided to do two things: one, pose this questions to reader(s): Which of these two albums is better? And is there another Led Zeppelin record that you like better than either of these? And two, I’ve listed out the tracks and assigned each one a grade. We’ll see which album comes out on top with the better GPA. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you today’s title bout…

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He needs better equipment.

Using gmail labs, you’ve been able to insert images into your emails for some time now. You’ve also been able to drag files right into the email rather than clicking “attach” and so on. Today, Google is launching a feature that combines those two features.

You can now just grab an image from your computer and drag it into your email and there it is in all its glory for your recipient to see. It’s unclear as to whether they will make it so you can drag images straight off a web page into your email or just from your computer’s hard drive. Either way, this is one more little piece of awesomeness from Gmail.

I just tried it out and it works like a charm. This isn’t even a lab feature, it’s built right into the software. You even have the choice of resizing the image once in its place within your correspondence.

PS – it only works if you’re using Google Chrome as your browser (for now). Which you should be anyway.

Apple pipe. I actually did this once. Except I didn’t puss out and use a lighter. I used a magnifying glass and the sun – just like Jesus did it. To be fair, I didn’t have a Rene Russo look-a-like under my blanket either.

Picked up The National’s newest effort today and it’s likely their best yet. “High Violet” has been getting pretty high marks around the nets today and to help celebrate both the release of this great new album and also the prospect of getting to see them live again this summer, the band has released a new video for the song “Bloodbuzz Ohio”. The video is a little uninspired, but it fits with the mood of the song pretty well. Which, by the way, is just so hard not to close your eyes and just revel in. You can see and listen below…

It had to be shown.

Canadian group Stars are preparing their new album The Five Ghosts for release in June, and a few days ago dropped the first single from it, entitled “Fixed.” This will be their first full album since 2007′s In Our Bedroom After the War (they’ve been working on solo projects in the meantime, including Amy Millan’s Masters of the Burial, which I highly recommend for fans of Jenny Lewis, Neko Case, and other alt-country-esque singers), and I can hardly wait to hear the whole thing. This first track has Amy’s soaring vocals against a dense, poppy, upbeat synthy musical background – in other words, it’s what you expect to hear from Stars, but that’s not a bad thing AT ALL. If anything, it’s synthier and more layered than ever.

So enjoy “Fixed,” and look out for The Five Ghosts at the end of June, and for Stars on tour. The tour, incidentally, looks to be selling out in several places, so get your tickets while you can. For anyone in the LA area, the venue they’re playing here, Troubadour, is a FANTASTIC small spot – seeing Stars in such an intimate venue is going to be a treat not to be missed.

Tour dates tucked after the jump.

via Stars’ official site

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Not your daddy’s Rolling Stones.