Sure, CMJ officially stands for College Music Journal, and at times the festival itself can feel, well, a lot like a college party: crowded, sticky, hot and full of a lot of bands that sound like your sister's-boyfriend's-bother's experimental synth-pop trio that uses upside-down buckets instead of drums...

Nothing has quite hung so deep in the narcissus pool of social media like Gaga's "Born this Way" -- it's a song built within the kingdom walls of Twitter and blogs, endlessly teased by the queen herself (along with her prime jester, Perez Hilton). First the words leaked, line by...

Newsflash: there are other records coming out this year besides Lady GaGa. And some of them, in my opinion anyway, should be even more hotly anticipated.

Bonus: most of them wear pants!

Here's a list of the Most Anticipated Indie Album Releases of 2011 (so far). Take a...

On Wednesday, Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine along with Conor Oberst and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers of America, joined together in a press conference to discuss Soundstrike and their campaign against Arizona's SB 1070, leading into their benefit...

I moved to Los Angeles around the time everyone had caught on to the new Laurel Canyon scene and wrote about the place like it oozed nextbigthings the way Hollywood oozed collagen, and I left around the time that everyone else had moved on to Downtown, to the Smell and...

You may not know the name Lou Barlow -- he's never stolen the mike from a teenage country singer at the VMAs, exposed a breast at the Super Bowl or been the soundtrack to an iTunes commercial.

But that doesn't mean that he or his bands -- Dinosaur...

Sure, there's nothing more alt-appealing then, say, a folk-metalcore band from Bauxite, Arkansas (little breeds a good review quicker than a niche town/good band combo- and hell, if there's two bands, we've got a movement, right?). Omaha is the next Portland is the next Seattle is the next Silverlake is...

When the good folks at the Huff asked me to write a piece for the launch of the New York page, the feeling I got was kind of like what might happen if a friend or my sister ever asks me to be the maid of honor in one of...

Every person -- especially every creative person and particularly those of us driven by words -- is facing a modern day conundrum: what means you, Twitter? Let's get this out of the way. I don't have a Twitter page, nor have I ever tweeted (correction: I had a Twitter page,...

I thought to myself, if I read another article on Kings of Leon, I might explode.

Sorry Kings, I do love you. Your sex IS on fire. But we all know you by now, don't we?

They were undiscovered once. They were that band that, well, maybe...

Today, Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley band release their documentary "One of a Kind," which chronicles their journey as they record and create two albums over the course of the past year. What makes this different than other music films is that it's available for free here...

The first time I heard an Indigo Girls song, or remember hearing one anyway, I was about 11 years old. I had just survived what felt like an overly traumatic dissolution of a crush on a boy named Joey, and for whatever reason, the song Ghost made everything feel...

Over the past week or two, John McCain's campaign has helped make the word "Arab" a pejorative, and Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, into a synonym for "terrorist." Whether it's from McCain's lips or his scary campaign mouthpieces, it doesn't matter much: he's simply not doing enough to...

Things that have dropped off the radar since the RNC:

1. "Barack Obama is Just a Community Organizer" (due to counter-point: "So was Jesus")
2. Possibly John McCain (see: Obama debates... Obama?)
3. Any coverage of the police brutality against journalists and protesters who were raided, some arrested...

Did McCain's speech sound like the same, tired, Bush rhetoric? Well, that's because it is.

Confused as to how "change" for McCain means...voting in another Republican? Me too.

In this theme, I propose a game I like to call, "Who Said What at What Convention?" There are only three possible...

Much has happened since John Lennon recorded "Give Peace a Chance" 39 years ago with new bride Yoko Ono in a Montreal Hotel Room, during their "Bed in For Peace." Presidents have come and gone, wars lost and won, and no one's talkin'...

As you may have noticed from my blogs, I'm a huge believer in the power of music to motivate change, both social, political and personal. Which is why when I heard that my friends over at Merge Records were throwing a benefit concert for one of their former interns...

Dear The Nation:

First off, let me take the chance to congratulate you on your constant struggle to bring to light progressive issues and ideas rarely touched upon in the mainstream media. Thank you for your honest coverage on the Iraq war, for uncovering the Double Life of James...

I think it was Hamlet that said "for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ: the record player."

Perhaps that wasn't the exact quote. But one thing is true: the CD is finally dying its much-awaited death, and it wasn't the MP3 that killed...

Ok, so maybe I haven't. But Katy Perry didn't either, and she's still singing about it. Go figure.

Setting: afternoon on a Thursday. Hollywood , California. A teal couch, a window looking up to Runyon Canyon, a girl, a coffee. And TRL.

"I want my MTV," I thought to...