This week’s New Music Report lasers in on the self-titled debut from supergroup Blakroc, a collaboration between the Akron blues-rock duo the Black Keys and a cast of guest rappers that includes Ludacris, Mos Def, RZA and Pharoahe Monch. It’s not a disc of Limp Bizkit rap-rock though — it’s more like something you’d expect from the Roots. On “On the Vista,” the Keys lay down free-floating psych grooves while Mos Def delivers what sounds like off the cuff rhymes. Raekwon contributes the excellent “Stay off the Fuckin’ Flowers” and the Keys churn out a great swamp-blues groove to back RZA on “Tellin’ Me Things.” But the disc’s best track is “Coochie,” a remake of an unreleased Ludacris song featuring a from-the-grave vocal from Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

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We thought Lars von Trier’s Antichrist would be the strangest thing we saw this year that starred Charlotte Gainsbourg. Turns out, we were wrong. Up top is the new video for “Heaven Can Wait,” the first from Gainsbourg’s collaborative album with Beck, IRM. Beck co-stars in the clip, a two-and-a-half minute montage that seems to incorporate and visualize all the abstract, offbeat imagery he’s documented about his native Los Angeles in his 15-year career.

The video, which debuted earlier today on Spinner, was directed by Keith Schofield, but watching it you’d think Gummo auteur Harmony Korine had a hand in it. Here’s a small sampling of all the WTF?! you’ll see in “Heaven Can Wait”: Police arresting a dude in a SpongeBob costume, a backyard boxing match next to a merry-go-round, a wigged dinosaur enjoying a bubble bath, a skateboard with hamburgers for wheels, babies dressed as hot dogs and a giant bomb with the word “Nachos” written on it. You really need to just see it for yourself to get the total, awesome effect. (more…)

Who: The 37-year-old son of Paul Simon, who’s casting out under his own name for the first time with his fall debut (read the RS review). Simon says the process of becoming a solo artist was a “journey of discovery” and though he was hesitant to step into the spotlight, “I realized, ‘If I don’t do this I’m going to regret it.’”

Sounds Like: Simon’s self-titled debut is a gorgeous collection of vintage-sounding country-folk tunes like the shuffling “Tennessee” and the dreamy psychedelic ballad “The Audit.” Have a listen to his Elliott Smith-esque “Shooting Star.” (more…)

Recent Rolling Stone cover star Shakira seems to be taking a page from her “Beautiful Liar” cohort Beyoncé in her new video for “Give It Up To Me,” executing some crisp choreography in a black leotard. But it gets weirder from there: after some fairly straightforward dancing and singing alongside Lil Wayne, Shakira transforms into a multi-armed deity, floating above the ground. Too weird for Beyoncé? We’d have said yes before checking out her latest clip for “Video Phone.” But the real question is how does this compare to all the other similarly titled tracks out there, like Jay-Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” and Madonna’s “Give It 2 Me”? (more…)

Good news for those who have completely finished their shot-by-shot analysis of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video: The video for Beyoncé’s “Video Phone (Remix)” featuring Gaga, off the I Am… Sasha Fierce reissue, was unveiled last night, and like “Bad Romance,” it’s an almost seizure-inducing parade of cinematic homages and wardrobe changes. From the opening shot — a tribute to the classic slow-motion walk in Reservoir Dogs — it’s obvious that “Video Phone” is a clip even our movie critic Peter Travers could love, with references to Flashdance, Grindhouse and Marlon Brando.

Check out hot shots of Beyoncé onstage and off.

The first half of “Video Phone” finds Beyoncé dancing with camera-headed figures that look like 21st century Residents. At the 2:30 mark, a demure Lady Gaga makes her first appearance, and that’s when the gunplay with large, colorful plastic weapons begins. At times throughout the Hype Williams-directed video, it seems like Beyoncé is emulating Katy Perry — or at least Katy Perry emulating Bettie Page — and M.I.A.

Lady Gaga’s wildest looks: don’t miss her most fierce fashion moments.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, the two divas also collaborated on the track “Telephone” off Gaga’s own The Fame Monster, due out November 23rd. (more…)

The Swell Season, the Oscar-winning duo from 2007’s Once, recently stopped by the Rolling Stone studios to perform a pair of tracks from their new album Strict Joy (”In These Arms” and “Low Rising”) along with their signature hit “Falling Slowly.” Check out Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová’s blend of Irish soul and dreamy pop right here. “Low Rising” and “Falling Slowly” are after the jump!
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If you’ve ever wondered what Christmas Eve at Bob Dylan’s house might be like, the video for his rollicking Christmas in the Heart polka song “Must Be Santa” offers a window into what happens when Dylan and his guests have a little too much eggnog. For the first video in support of his first-ever Christmas album — and the first of Dylan’s own music videos he’s appeared in for an album track since Time Out of Mind’s “Not Dark Yet” in 1997 — Dylan certainly seems to be in the holiday spirit, imbibing, singing and even dancing while donning a Santa hat with the rest of the guests at this wild house party. Rolling Stone has the video’s exclusive premiere right here.

Check out RS‘ collection of Bob Dylan photos.

Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean there can’t be some fisticuffs: Keeping with the fighting theme from Dylan’s “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” video, also helmed by “Must Be Santa” director Nash Edgerton, a little tiff breaks out between two partygoers, resulting in smashed glassware and a chandelier becoming an escape route, but none of it puts a damper on Christmas, as Dylan and Santa Claus are seen chilling outside in the video’s closing moments. (more…)

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…)