Roughly equidistant from New York and Boston, Newport, RI, is an old-money vacation town where, for one summer weekend a year, flashy cars, big yachts, and bigger estates share attention with folksingers like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, whose lyrics preach about the dangers of a lavish lifestyle.

With their pitch-perfect harmonies, baroque acoustic guitar figures, and pastoral lyrics, Fleet Foxes can induce certain unintended side effects. Drowsiness, for one. Their reverb-soaked voices can either soothe, or weigh heavily on the eyelids, depending on the time of the night.

Here's some of the strangest music news the Internet had to offer this week:

Justin Timberlake: Pop star, Saturday Night Live sidekick … author of a book about golf!?! [New York Observer]

A three-hour drive from Seattle, Washington, up over the Cascade Mountains and through at least three ecosystems (oceanic to tundra to desert), is the Columbia River Gorge, a gigantic canyon around one of America's biggest rivers, formed by a cataclysmic flood at the end of the last ice age.

First comes "retirement," then comes marriage, then comes the subsequent release of all-new metal tunes.

This week Green Day gave lucky fans a sneak peek of their summer tour, Jack White's new band, the Dead Weather, debuted live, Rihanna planned her comeback, and Phil Spector was convicted of murder. See all these stories, plus the week's top photo galleries, editor's blogs, audio/video, news, and reviews, below: