Here's the bad thing about this apparently official video for Michael Shrieve's great "Transfer Station Blue" (and I promise, it's the only bad thing): it doesn't earn that big scoop of guitar (played by Michael's brother Kevin) that drops in around 1:43. The original, which you can listen to here, absolutely does, and is probably what makes it such an unbelievable piece of work: all that propulsive shimmering-city anime-dudes-on-future-motorcycles shit just drenched in the smoothiest, jazziest, funkiest guitar you've ever heard. I have no clue what this video is about, by the way. [via Dream Chimney]

Check out this video of an unbelievably wasted girl tries to have sex with a tree after getting in a fight with it, at Ultra Music Festival 2012, as a crowd gathers in a circle chanting "fuck the tree." Download our free drugs sex tree fight Megaupload Ultra rave ecstasy sex. Free Ultra 2012 download fuck the tree rave music Skrillex Bieber. Drugs Tree. [via Hipster Runoff]

On her 12th studio album, MDNA (out this week), Madonna sometimes talks about her life with Guy Ritchie ("Would you have married me if I were poor?"). But her self-fixation, the album's real theme, is generally career-focused. You hear it in the way the way that certain songs echo her past work — "I'm a Sinner" breaks with a guitar solo a la "Ray of Light" and sports the plastic psychedelia of "Beautiful Stranger," while the chord progression of "Beautiful Killer" is similar to that of "Die Another Day." There are overt references, too – "Like a Virgin," "Into the Groove" and "Lucky Star" are name checked. The album opens with, "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee and I detest all my sins..." which she previously said in Like a Prayer's "Act of Contrition."

It's so simple, babies will swoon. "Boyfriend," the first single from Justin Bieber's upcoming third full-length, Believe (a silly made up word derived from the real word "Belieber"), opens with an eerie birdcall and stark 808 clap. Then Bieber's increasingly present rapping alter-ego, Swaggy Doo (not his actual moniker, but it should be), competently says nothing and mentions eating fondue by the fire. The whatever-ness of these eight bars only makes the resulting hook that much grabbier. Saying hello to falsetto is a joy – a magically mature Bieber sounds as assured as Justin Timberlake or Robin Thicke as he floats over pairs of brusque acoustic-guitar chords in a plea that manages to be anthemic and low-key.

German publication B.Z. has shed some light on the apocalyptic coming together of the Manilow*, Manson, Del Rey trio, pictured together at the Echo Music Awards in Germany: Marilyn Manson and Lana Del Rey are dating. B.Z. is supposedly in possession of photographic evidence that the once-rumored Wonder Years star and forever-rumored self-fellating rocker is having hotel sleepovers with Lana Del Rey.

As part of our ongoing project to catalog the 2012 presidential election from a metal point of view, we've been soliciting presidential endorsements from noteworthy American metal musicians. Today: Vattnet Viskar.

Behold: Lana Del Rey, Marilyn Manson and Barry Manilow — backstage, as far as I can tell, at the Echo Music Awards in Germany a couple nights ago. "And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt." [via]

Rock's answer to Eeyore, Magnetic Fields brainchild Stephin Merritt, was once accused of being racist for his professed love of the song "Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah" (from Song of the South, the insanely minstrely black sheep of the Disney catalog) and for not seeming too into black music. Well, two can play that game, as Merritt has called out Adele's legion of fans for some bigotry of their own in an interview with Dan Weiss for L.A. Weekly. Here's how it goes down:

Legendary dipshit Gene Simmons is taking KISS and Motley Crue on tour. What's that going to be like? Take it away, Gene:

Where do you go from a misguided cover of "Niggas in Paris"? Dissing Beyoncé sounds about right. While discussing a potential collaboration with Rihanna on BBC 1, Perry noted that she doesn't want to rush things. And then she got passive-aggressive.

Sometime in the last couple weeks or so, someone apparently gave Snoop Dogg the password to his SoundCloud account, and the universe is better for it. There are outtakes from his studio (filed under "UNCUT DOGG" and "INSTRAMENTAL FROM DOGG") and odds and ends from his record collection ("FOR PRODUCER TO MAKE BEAT"). And an 70-minute deep house mix.

In today's second edition of "Don't Make That Rap Video," Katy Perry covered Kanye and Jay-Z's "Niggas in Paris" over the weekend. It is obviously horrible, but it did leave us with a fascinating chicken-or-egg question: Did Katy Perry beget Karmin, the white-people-rappin' duo featuring Perry doppelganger Amy Heidemann on vocals, or did Karmin's insufferable covers beget Katy Perry trying to be more like Karmin?

As part of our ongoing project to catalog the 2012 presidential election from a metal point of view, we've been soliciting presidential endorsements from noteworthy American metal musicians. Today: Sutekh Hexen.

As part of our ongoing project to catalog the 2012 presidential election from a metal point of view, we've been soliciting presidential endorsements from noteworthy American metal musicians. Today: Exhumed.

Austin, TX—The cultural season has turned here at the South By Southwest Festival, now on day seven. With the end of SXSW Interactive on Tuesday, the internet obsessives shipped out and were replaced yesterday by the cool kids of SXSW Music. Can you tell the difference between rival camps?

The Guardian got its hands on a cache of violent Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad's emails from last year, and the upshot, so far, is that the guy bought a bunch of songs on iTunes. We made a Spotify playlist of them.

Before he was arrested last December, Chief Keef, a 16-year-old hip-hop star, was almost completely unknown outside of Chicago's South Side. He had a song called "Bang," which had more than 400,000 views on YouTube, and he had a mixtape, and a dedicated following amongst Chicago high school students. But he was not a rapper who was known outside of the local high schools. His Facebook profile indicated that he worked as a sales rep for "Selling Dope." He lived with his grandmother.

As part of our ongoing project to catalog the 2012 presidential election from a metal point of view, we've been soliciting presidential endorsements from noteworthy American metal musicians. Today: Omen.

Some here at Gawker argue that Canadian Power Puff Girl Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe' is the new perfect pop song. While I have listened to that song twelve times in a row today, I have to disagree: 'Bad Boy,' by K-pop boy group Big Bang, is even more perfect. It's so perfect it transcends language.

It's been some time since we were bombarded by a perfect pop song, and even longer since we've been bombarded by a perfect pop song from a young Canadian pop idol, but 26-year-old Carly Rae Jepsen has fulfilled both world shortages with a single, maddeningly addicting song: "Call Me Maybe."