Cobra Starship, 'Hot Mess' (Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen)

A boatload of disco, with just a splash of panic.

The marquee attraction on these crafty electro-emo pranksters’ third album is “Good Girls Go Bad,” a sasstastic collaboration with Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester.

Maxwell, 'BLACKsummers’night' (Columbia)

Afro? Completely gone. Mojo? Stronger than ever.

This neo-soul trailblazer hasn’t released a new album since 2001’s Now, but after returning to the stage last fall, Maxwell is coming back with a flourish: Dude says this is the first installment in a planned trilogy. Grittier and less New Age-y than his previous work, BLACKsummers’night suggests that Maxwell spent his sabbatical doing more than yoga.

The Fiery Furnaces, 'I'm Going Away' (Thrill Jockey)

Brooklyn's busiest bro and sis chill out for a sec.

How does a year without a new Fiery Furnaces album feel?

Inside the Michael Jackson Tribute

SPIN contributor Mikael Wood recounts the experience of attending the memorial the whole world was watching.
Memorial Service For Michael Jackson (Getty)

This morning, a few hours before the start of the Michael Jackson memorial service, the Staples Center courtyard resembled a dense jungle of cables and microphones and satellite dishes, beefy camera guys shooting pictures of other beefy camera guys shooting pictures of other beefy camera guys. An alien landscape in which every human somehow seemed comfortably at home.

Dave Matthews Band, 'Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King' (RCA)

Jam-band kings bulk up, rock through sadness.

The first sound you hear on the new Dave Matthews Band album is the bleat of LeRoi Moore's saxophone -- appropriate for a disc titled in honor of the founding member, who died unexpectedly last August following a freak ATV accident.

The Mars Volta, 'Octahedron' (Warner Bros.)

Duo reinjects soulful noise into interstellar freakouts.

Unless you're the kind of prog-rock nut who plans to buy I Love You, Man on DVD just to relive the scene at the Rush concert, you're probably suffering from an acute case of Mars Volta Fatigue right about now.

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