Six albums and 10 years into their career as indie-pop double threats Tegan and Sara, the 29-year-old Canadian duo have put enough distance between themselves and their first releases to analyze them critically. Quite critically, it turns out. “I like to think that our career is divided into two really important times. Those first couple of records, I’ve come to terms with how embarrassed I am of them and see them as … development,” Sara Quin tells Rolling Stone. “Now we understand our voices and the songwriting process and how we want to present ourselves to the audience. We also have an audience now.”

That kind of brutal honesty has helped endear the pair to their loyal fans, who sometimes like to express their admiration in aggressive ways. Tegan kicked off a Halloween night show in New York by indicating the burly security guards positioned onstage and giving a brief speech about the good and bad ways to show the band love: “Sometimes you guys get so excited you run up here and that scares Tegan and Sara.”

But the duo never forget that their onstage storytelling gives fans a real connection, and recently issued a series of three revealing books called On It At that document tours and a trip to New Orleans that marked the first time they’d ever attempted to write together. (Watch the video above to hear more on that experience.) (more…)

L.A. singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart has been saddled with responsibility for spearheading the freak-folk movement, but with each of his six albums that term has become an increasingly irrelevant way to describe his sound. Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell says that’s the case again on Banhart’s latest LP, What Will We Be, an eclectic LP that dips into lots of classic rock styles. He even warbles in a baritone that’s eerily reminiscent of Jim Morrison on “Rats.” (more…)

Who The U.K. synth-pop sensation — it’s scored two Top Five hits in England — consists of striking androgynous singer Elly Jackson and behind-the-scenes beatmaker Ben Langmaid (he refuses to be interviewed or photographed and doesn’t perform live). But Jackson is used to being the center of attention, for her hair — a red, Woody Woodpecker-style pouf — and her piercing voice. Says Jackson, “It’s a massively powerful instrument.”

Sounds Like Inspired by Eighties keyboard-and-vocal groups like the Human League and Yaz, La Roux’s tunes — which the pair cut in Langmaid’s living room — feature staccato synths over pulsing beats and Jackson’s insistent, high-pitched vocals. “I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell,” says Jackson. “But when I started going clubbing, I realized I didn’t want to sit on a chair with a guitar.” (more…)

While TV on the Radio take a break between albums, the band’s guitarist-singer Kyp Malone has been keeping busy with his side project Rain Machine, whose debut came out in September. Rain Machine will be opening up for the Pixies on their Doolittle tour starting Friday in Los Angeles (check back Thursday for a full report from the Pixies’ opening-night show), and today they’re debuting their new video for “Give Blood” right here.

“The concept came from watching my kid and her friends transform the sterile environment of a luxury hotel suite into a circus on the night of her birthday,” Malone tells RS. “I thought that if we could channel even a fraction of their energy we’d be onto something.” (more…)

“Wait Your Turn,” the first video from Rihanna’s November 23rd album Rated R, has been posted on the singer’s Website, 10 days before her clip for first single “Russian Roulette” is due to premiere on ABC’s 20/20. Anthony Mandler directed both clips, as well as Jay-Z’s dark video for “Run This Town,” which is stylistically similar to the “Wait Your Turn” spot. Mandler previously helmed five videos off Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad. Per Just Jared, “Wait Your Turn” was shot in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood on October 16th.

Rihanna’s fierce fashions: check out photos of the star onstage and off.

Though this is Rihanna’s first music video since “Rehab” — and first featuring her own music since prior to her February 8th altercation with Chris Brown — fans hoping to glean a bit about the singer’s state of mind from the clip will be disappointed. Rihanna gazes at the camera — sometimes in sunglasses, sometimes wearing a patch over her right eye — while her movements are captured in a grainy black-and-white reminiscent of surveillance camera footage. There’s no plot to speak of, just Rihanna singing to the chorus, “The wait is ova, the wait is ova,” while traipsing around a desolate park, a rooftop overlooking Manhattan and a bridge. Sometimes she stands in front of a statue of an angel so it appears its wings are sprouting from her own back. (more…)

Muse debuted their new video for “Undisclosed Desires” on MySpace today as part of New Moon’s musical invasion of the site. Interestingly, though, “Undisclosed Desires” is not the Muse song that appears on the movie’s soundtrack — that’s “I Belong to You (New Moon Remix)” — and you won’t get a glimpse of Robert Pattinson or Kristen Stewart in the clip. What you do get, though, is Matt Bellamy and Co. belting out their INXS-esque track from The Resistance and a whole lot of tangled instrument cables.

For more on Muse, don’t miss David Fricke’s profile Global Superstars Muse Explode in America.

Voodoo Experience ‘09 annexed New Orleans’ City Park last weekend for three days of music and festival madness, and people partied hard. They rocked out to the interstellar grooves of the Flaming Lips, the ballsy arena rock of Kiss, the brash rhymes of Eminem, among many others. They rode around naked on bicycles. Yes, naked. And that’s just the bands in these exclusive interviews we’re talking about. (For much more from Voodoo, stop by Fuse.TV.)

Check out the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne as he explains why people in his upcoming video for “Watching the Planets” are biking around the cold woods in Portland, Oregon, wearing nothing but smiles. Oh, and if you listen closely, you can hear Coyne’s Flaming “Nips” Freudian slip. Nippy indeed! Plus, Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro talks about “closing” the Le Ritual stage for Kiss, and Kiss explain that they were thinking of going onstage dressed as “normal people” for Halloween — we’re glad that idea got nixed.

Be sure to tune in Friday, November 6th at 10 p.m. EST for a Fuse-tastic take on the Voodoo Experience.  

But for now, enjoy the interviews and photos of Voodoo’s biggest moments and Rolling Stone’s recaps of big sets by Eminem, as well as Lenny Kravitz with the Flaming Lips.

Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 single “Empire State of Mind” is inescapable in New York, blaring from car stereos and even Yankee Stadium, where the hometown hero performed the track with Alicia Keys last week. Now the pair have debuted the video for their NYC love letter on MySpace Music. The clip was filmed in early October at several landmark sites around Manhattan, notably Harlem, Times Square and Ground Zero.

Music video vet Hype Williams directed the video, with an obvious nod to black-and-white films like Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Jules Dassin’s Naked City, two films that perhaps best photographed and documented New York City. The “Empire State of Mind” video goes full color in its final minute to capture the full awe of Keys performing in Times Square and the Manhattan skyline. For a little bonus fun while you watch, check out this Google map tracking the locations Jay rhymes about, from State Street to Tribeca. (more…)

After teasing fans with 15-second clips on her Twitter yesterday, Britney Spears finally revealed the video for her Hot 100-topping single “3,” the new track that will feature on her upcoming The Singles Collection. You’d expect the video for a song about threesomes to be Rated-X, but Spears keeps things borderline tasteful with the “3″ vid, busting out some suggestive dance moves that are nowhere near as racy as the lyrics to “If U Seek Amy.” Instead, Spears and her cadre of dancers go the “Single Ladies” route by scaling back on sets and simply dancing in front of white and gray backgrounds. It’s not Britney’s best (it’s nowhere near her “Slave 4 U” clip), but we haven’t seen her dancing with this much conviction since the In the Zone era.

Watch all of Britney’s videos in our guide to her memorable clips.

Considering that today marks the two-year anniversary of Blackout, as Spears’ official Website points out, it’s clear Britney’s dance skills are getting back on track. (more…)

Rolling Stone recently caught up with Lenny Kravitz backstage at New York’s Fillmore at Irving Plaza, where the rocker performed a residency of five sold-out nights in celebration of the 20th anniversary of his debut album. “It’s been 20 years now since I made Let Love Rule, and for me the record is still just as fresh as it was when I made it,” Kravitz tells RS. “When I hear a recording, I can remember everything about my life at that time. It all comes back.”

Kravitz says the album still sounds fresh because he went about recording Let Love Rule in an “organic way.” “It doesn’t have the sound of a certain era,” Kravitz says, and the album does have a timeless quality — it certainly doesn’t sound like it was recorded in 1989, and even Kravitz admits it doesn’t fit into the archetype of what black men were recording two decades ago. “I’ve never fit in,” Kravitz said. “I was supposed to be the an angry black man. I remember when I first started doing interviews, the big question was ‘Why aren’t you doing hip-hop?’ ” (more…)

The “Christian Rock” pick in this week’s New Music Report (contributing editor Christian Hoard’s current fave) is Scars, the fifth album from British house duo Basement Jaxx. The group’s 2001 album Rooty featured the hit “Romeo,” which charted in the States thanks to its synthetic yet warm vibe, and Scars is their best album since then. All the tracks are all sung by guest vocalists including Santigold and Kelis, as well as smaller names like Paloma Faith, who takes the lead on “What’s a Girl Got to Do.” It’s a song that’s ready for an iPod commercial with its clipped disco groove, keyboard stabs and rejiggered New Orleans brass.

The beats on Scars are often stronger than the songs, but when Basement Jaxx get a hot beat and a hot tune together you get something magical: progressive pop. It is dance music that can venture into the cheesy — but it’s a good cheesy.

Check out all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don't have iTunes, download it here.]

Rolling Stone is always thrilled to capture a young star covering a legend’s work, and that’s exactly what happened when onetime Breaking artist Jamey Johnson stopped by our studios for an acoustic rendition of Kris Kristofferson’s “A Moment of Forever.” Kristofferson was also the subject of a recent RS story: an epic profile by Ethan Hawke in Issue 1076. Check out Hawke’s guide to the outlaw poet’s essential tracks and click above to watch Johnson’s performance.

Who: Before this rising New York indie-pop quartet played a note together, they had a band name, a MySpace page and some shared tastes: “We loved loud, sort of enthusiastic, life-affirming pop like Yo La Tengo and Smashing Pumpkins,” says frontman and songwriter Kip Berman, “where there’s big guitars and everything’s right in the world.”

Sounds Like: February’s debut disc and the just-released Higher Than the Stars EP are dreamy and shimmery, with plenty of guitar fuzz — a deft update of late-Eighties and Nineties indie-and-alt rock, from 120 Minutes staples like Sonic Youth and the Cure to obscure, strum-heavy acts like Black Tambourine and the Pastels. “Even if things have been done before, it feels novel when you do them yourself,” says Berman. (more…)

Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet tour wrapped its record-breaking run last month in Israel, but fans can still catch the Material Girl’s incredible Hard Candy stage show on October 30th when EpixHD.com airs footage from her sold-out four-night stand in Buenos Aires from December 2008. As a first look at the footage, Billboard premiered the above video of Madonna and company performing a funky, reworked “Into the Groove” — a song that Madonna herself told RS she feels “retarded singing.”

Sticky & Sweet up close: photos from Madonna’s tour.

This new take on “Into the Groove,” which featured in the “Old School” segment of Madonna’s concert, samples other dance-floor classics like Newcleus’ “Jam On It” and Sugarhill Gang’s “Apache” while characters from late artist (and Madonna pal) Keith Haring dance on dozens of giant screens. But the most awe-inspiring thing about the performance is Madonna herself, as the then-50-year-old jumpropes Double Dutch — while singing. (more…)

For your viewing pleasure on this This Is It Tuesday, we’re checking out a trio of new videos from across the musical spectrum. First up, Norah Jones’ video for the first single off her November 17th album The Fall, “Chasing Pirates,” which premiered today on VH1’s Website. True to the title, Jones finds a treasure map in a bottle at the beginning of the video, launching her into a dream that turns her Manhattan apartment building into a fully navigational pirate ship. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Jones’ The Fall will also feature contributions from Ryan Adams and Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff. (more…)