Who says the British monarchy is powerless?

Though not a Christian rapper, Kid Cudi found Jesus in a Virgin Megastore. "I was looking at CDs, saw the gleam of a Jesus piece in the right side of my eye, looked up, and it was Kanye West," says the rapper, who decided this was divine intervention on behalf of his recording career. Mustering all his folksy Midwestern charm, he introduced himself and offered up his music.

Two years ago, Scott and Seth Avett were summoned by the Wizard of Rock. Apparently Rick Rubin had liked Emotionalism, their fifth album of love-drunk country rock, and wanted to grant them an audience, high in his Malibu home overlooking the ocean.

"That's my shit!" shouts David Longstreth in the middle of his pad Thai lunch. He's just seen one of his lyrics misquoted in a review of Bitte Orca, the new album by his band Dirty Projectors. Rather than induce righteous anger, this gaffe makes him ecstatic.

"If you live there, then you slowly die." That's how Brandon Welchez, frontman and beat programmer for drone-pop duo Crocodiles, describes his band's hometown of San Diego. "A lot of the nastiness in our music comes from reacting to the boring culture there, and the sunshine," adds guitarist Charles Rowell. "The sunshine can be oppressive."

The five mad young men in Gallows have beef with Mickey Mouse. "He hates us," says wiry, heavily tattooed lead snarler Frank Carter, 25, speaking on the phone from the home he shares with his mother in the English town of Hemel Hempstead. "The day before a show at the House of Blues in Disneyland, we got a call saying Disney wouldn't let us play because our lyrics were offensive.