This preview of Vampire Weekend's forthcoming third album, Modern Vampires of the City (due May 7th), roars and clatters like a souped-up jalopy, with a cyber-sock-hop groove, surf-guitar outbursts, hand claps and Ezra Koenig's giddily hiccuping vocals, which pitch-shift from Elvis to Michael Jackson to EDM chipmunk. If you were the bookish type, you just might read it as a meta-critique of pop stardom and its dark underbelly; at one point, Koenig creepily suggests, "You got the luck of a Kennedy/So grab the wheel." ("Diane Young" = dyin' young, get it?)  At the same time, the song simply rocks up a storm, in a distinctly VW kind of way. Sounds like a band that still has plenty left to prove.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.