Having dabbled in various styles over his two-decade-plus career, singer-songwriter Charles Thompson (aka Frank Black, Black Francis) tells Billboard.com his creative approach -– as heard on his new Black Francis CD “NonStopErotik,” due out March 30 on Cooking Vinyl -– remains the same. That is, there isn’t one.

Christian Hoard’s “Christian Rock” new music pick this week is a 28-year-old prose/poetry writer from Minneapolis with a philosophy degree called Dessa (real name: Margret Wander), who’s also a member of the rap collective Doomtree. Her debut A Badly Broken Code reminds Hoard of fellow Minnesota MC Slug. The beats are punchy and straight-forward, and so is Dessa. One of the best cuts is “The Bullpen,” where she rhymes about putting up with really annoying behavior from men. She suffers from a touch of “underground rapper syndrome” (symptoms: sounding serious too often), but her rapping and singing are solid and her love songs are strong and nuanced. She may be wordy, but she doesn’t waste syllables.

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Photo: Eichner/WireImage

October 21, 2010 will mark the 15th anniversary of the passing of Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon, and his former bandmates are honoring their original singer with an upcoming documentary later this year. The still-untitled piece is being directed by Colleen Hennessy and developed through Danny Clinch’s production company, Three on the Tree. While it will feature footage from several sources, the main focus of the film is the hours of footage Hoon shot himself over the years.

“Shannon took this footage for a reason — he wanted people to see this footage,” the group’s guitarist Christopher Thorn tells Rolling Stone. “He filmed everything. Some of the most powerful footage is when Shannon sits on the corner of his bed in a hotel room, looks right into the camera, and sings the most beautiful, heart-wrenching song. Some you’ve heard before, some you’ve never heard this version before. It might be ‘Mouthful of Cavities’ or ‘St. Andrew’s Fall’ with completely different lyrics, or it could be a song we’ve never heard before. It’s the most intimate, incredible footage — as if he knew, ‘I’m not going to be around, man, so here’s my gift to you when I’m gone.’ “

The film will include footage from Blind Melon’s tour alongside Neil Young and the Rolling Stones, Thorn giving Hoon an off-the-cuff haircut, and the recording sessions for both Hoon-era Melon albums, 1992’s Blind Melon and 1995’s Soup. But there is one haunting scene that the group is still debating including. “We literally have the beginning of the band to Shannon’s last words on the phone with Lisa [Hoon's girlfriend],” Thorn says. “It’s so sad, because he sounded fine that morning. That was at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning — he makes a phone call to Lisa, and they’re talking about Nico [Hoon's then-infant daughter], and Shannon’s talking about, ‘Are you going to get something to eat?’ That’s the last we heard from him.”

The end result promises to be a doc that will double as a “video diary” of sorts, which Thorn compares to a filmed version of Kurt Cobain’s Journals. “It’s one thing to read somebody’s writing, but when somebody looks into the camera, and you see the fear, the sadness, or the happiness. I would say it’s even more intimate. How amazing would it be to have Kurt sitting on the edge of his bed in a hotel room, singing these songs to you? This is like Shannon’s journal times a thousand. People are going to be absolutely blown away.”

In addition to working on the documentary, Blind Melon are still searching for a singer to take over for Shannon’s replacement, Travis Warren, who lasted for one album, 2008’s For My Friends. “If we found somebody that made me feel like we could still honor Shannon, still honor the songs, and go out there and make people happy, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Thorn says. “But those are giant shoes to fill, and you can’t even fill them — it has to be something different. It also has to be close enough so that it doesn’t sound like a different band.” Potential singers are asked to submit an MP3 or YouTube link — singing a Blind Melon song of your choice — to blindmelonsinger@gmail.com.

Rolling Stone blogger Daniel Kreps directs your attention to Local Natives’ self-produced debut disc Gorilla Manor — which checked in on the charts at Number 142 this week — in our weekly spotlight of the best new music. The quintet come from Los Angeles’ Silver Lake district, and like their neighbors the Fleet Foxes, Local Natives excel at multi-part harmonies. But while Fleet Foxes gravitate towards more rootsy, Crosby, Stills and Nash-style harmonics, Local Natives draw on the Talking Heads’ brand of Afro-pop (Gorilla Manor actually features a cover of Talking Heads’ “Warning Sign”). Other standouts include the infectious “Camera Talk” and “Cubism Dream,” which sounds like something a supergroup of My Morning Jacket and Grizzly Bear would have created.

Catch up on all of Rolling Stone’s album reviews.

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Photo courtesy of Epitaph Records

When MTV’s original movie Turn The Beat Around premieres this Friday, February 26 at 10 PM EST, you’ll probably notice that some familiar dance jams have been given a musical makeover by bands like Just Kait (who covers Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff”) , Jeffree Star (who takes a stab at Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls”) and Sing It Loud (who tackle “Get Down Tonight” by KC And The Sunshine Band).

“We really wanted to do a song that was out of our element,” explains Sing It Loud frontman Pat Brown of the band’s decision to bring in ‘da noise, bring in ‘da funk. “Anyone that listens to our music would know that ‘Get Down Tonight’ isn’t our ’style,’ but we wanted to record it so it was almost identical to the original—with the exception of my voice. It was one of the more fun experiences I’ve ever had in a recording setting. It’s fun to do something different!”

Indubitably. In fact, this Minneapolis-based, pop-rock quartet happens to be besties with more than a couple bands on the Turn The Beat Around soundtrack (like Star, Millionaires, who get freaky with Chic’s “Le Freak,” and Cobra Starship, who recorded the movie’s title track), thanks to numerous summers touring together on the Vans Warped Tour.

So, if push came to well-choreographed shove, who would Brown like to grab for a slow dance and why?

“Shakira. My answer is self-explanatory.”

+ Listen to “Get Down Tonight” by Sing It Loud here.

When “The Buried Life” boys head down to South Central for a Krump competition, a piece of Aurora, IL, accompanies them: a track by Maker (a.k.a Marco Jacobo). Maker made his name in the late-’90s Chicago underground hip-hop scene by finding hard, natural drum breaks and splicing them together into funky, laid-back tracks, the type that would later serve as the backdrop for rhymes by MC Qwel and Grayskul.

On “The Buried Life,” however, you hear Maker matching his wits with samples from Now-Again’s catalog of rare dark soul, psych-rock and funk reissues. The resulting tune, appropriately named “Maker vs. Now Again,” will have even the most learned crate-digger stumped. Maker is thrilled to be a part of “The Buried Life” soundtrack: “I think the concept is really interesting. It’s a thought everyone has at some point in their life — What do I want to do before I die? — I know I have.”

What’s on this Aurora DJ’s bucket list? A few interesting possibilities: 1. Learn how to sail and go get lost for a while. 2. See the pyramids in Egypt. 3. Play poker with Michael Jordan. (Number three is probably on the bucket list of many guys from Chi-town.)

Having just finished up a tour with Grayskul to support the collaboration “Graymaker,” Maker is focused on a new album with MC Qwel and another solo project. If you can’t get enough of him, you can also track down his beats on the second season of “This American Life” and the horror movie, “Trick ‘r Treat.” (How can you go wrong with a tagline like: “Poison, Drowning, Claw, Or Knife. So Many Ways To Take A Life”?)

Rihanna takes music video eye candy to the next level with the colorful, Salt-N-Pepa-meets-M.I.A. visuals for her new single, “Rude Boy,”

Kevin O’Donnell breaks down the latest disc from British electro-pop gurus Hot Chip in this week’s New Music Report. Since 2000, the group has delivered four albums packed with danceable tracks with brains and a heart. One Life Stand boasts 10 songs that thump with house beats and feature intricate melodies performed with the precision of a classical orchestra. “Take It In” starts with ominous synths and gloomy basslines before gliding into a pretty, angelic chorus where Alexis Taylor sings about how his heart can fly like a dove. “Thieves in the Night” pairs a strutting beat and Flock of Seagulls-style synths with a dark narrative that sounds like a modern take on a Brothers Grimm tale.

Catch up on 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.]

“The Music of Ireland – Welcome Home,” a documentary featuring interviews and performances from U2, Pete Seeger, Sinead O’Connor and the Chieftans will debut on New York public television station WLIW on Feb. 17, then rollout to other PBS affiliates throughout March.

Pitchfork Music Festival, the three-day music event in Chicago organized and curated by the indie-centric website of the same name, has announced Pavement, Modest Mouse and LCD Soundsystem as headliners of the 2010 edition.

Rolling Stone editor Kevin O’Donnell’s new pick this week is Teen Dream from Beach House. On their past two records, this Baltimore duo crafted pretty dreamy pop tunes made with little more than some junk-shop keyboards, a guitar and cheap drum machines. But their ambitions and production techniques have grown on their third record, which is also their first for the big indie label Sub Pop. Lead single “Norway” piles breathy choral vocals and droney guitar lines on top of singer Victoria Legrand’s husky voice, which has the sort of effortless power of singers like Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick. Elsewhere, the band dips into some electro-pop cheese on songs like “Lover of Mine” and gets epic on the sweeping track “10 Mile Stereo,” one of the album’s best tracks. Overall, this is one of the prettiest records to come out so far this year.

Read 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.]

Avatar has officially passed Titanic to become the highest-grossing film of all time, and we’d like to imagine the Na’vi would choose to celebrate with a giant music festival (stay with us) where Bruce Springsteen and Madonna would share top billing with Bono, the Beatles and Lil Wayne. If you ever wondered what Jay-Z and Beyoncé would look like on Pandora — or how Lady Gaga’s impossibly geometric outfits would work with more pronounced ears — you can’t miss this gallery of rock-star Avatars (not to be confused with these other rock-star avatars of the video game variety):

• Pandora’s Music Box: Rock Stars’ Na’vi Avatars

More Avatar:

• The Impossible Reality of James Cameron
• Avatar: Peter Travers’ Review

Live Nation and Ticketmaster, the two biggest players in the $4.4 billion worldwide concert business, received U.S. Department of Justice approval Monday for a merger that is likely to affect every live-music fan, artist, agent, manager and promoter. In a statement, Ticketmaster’s chief executive, Eagles manager Irving Azoff, called the decision “a great win for fans,” but some in the business fear the companies’ combined power will make it difficult for outsiders to promote shows and sell tickets. “It’s disappointing to me. It’s just another step in eliminating competition,” says Buck Williams, a Nashville agent who represents R.E.M. and Widespread Panic. “They’ve pulled the rug out from under the entrepreneurs, to some degree.”

The new Live Nation Entertainment, which will begin merging its operations as early as Wednesday, will own a huge chunk of the business: Ticketmaster’s Front Line management company represents the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, Christina Aguilera and many other artists, while Live Nation’s exclusive clients include Madonna and Jay-Z; Ticketmaster has exclusive ticketing deals with most of the major U.S. arenas, while Live Nation owns and operates 140 top venues overall, including most of the amphitheatres; and, of course, Ticketmaster sells some 140 million tickets a year.

These combined assets make reps for some music stars optimistic. “My hope and belief is that there is going to be an expanded opportunity for touring artists to [experiment with] a variety of different products,” says Jim Guerinot, manager of No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and others. “And I look forward to trying those things.”

Azoff and Live Nation’s CEO, Michael Rapino, spent much of 2009 arguing the merged company would have the clout and flexibility to fix the “broken” concert business. The new Live Nation Entertainment, they said, would have the power and flexibility to cut costs, make more money from the lucrative resale market and ultimately reduce ticket prices and service fees. In one of the first major antitrust decisions during the Obama Administration, the Justice Department agreed — to a point. Before approving the merger, U.S. attorneys forced Ticketmaster to license its software to top competitor AEG Live and forbade the merged company from retaliating against any concert venue that uses a non-Ticketmaster ticketing outlet.

The agreement “promotes robust competition for primary ticketing services and preserves incentives for competitors to innovate and discount, which will benefit consumers,” said Christine Varney, an assistant attorney in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, in a statement. (Executives for Live Nation and Ticketmaster were unavailable for interviews. Several of the new companies top competitors refused comment or didn’t return phone calls. AEG reps would only give a statement saying its Justice Department deal “will foster our ability to compete effectively in the ticketing, venue operation and live event promotion businesses.”)

Will the merger lower ticket prices, as Azoff and Rapino insist? It’s too early to say, but several artist reps were skeptical. “I don’t think prices are going to come down,” says Tom Windish, a Chicago agent who represents Animal Collective, Hot Chip, the Knife and dozens of other top indie artists. “I don’t think it’s going to change that much. I don’t see Live Nation getting less money, I don’t see artists getting less money and I don’t see Ticketmaster charging a surcharge that’s lower than [what] they can possibly get. If anything, it’ll be higher.”

Lauryn Hill hasn’t performed live in nearly three years, but the reclusive rapper and soul singer surfaced on Saturday for a surprise performance at the Raggamuffin music festival in New Zealand.

Photograph by Jeff Antebi

As we prepare to live blog Hope for Haiti, the mega-telethon featuring performances by Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Jay-Z with U2 and dozen more stars, Rolling Stone hopes you pause to look through Jeff Antebi’s photographs from Haiti. The music industry vet explains how he went from shepherding Danger Mouse’s career to documenting current events after the jump.

• Images From Haiti: Photos By Music Biz Vet Jeff Antebi

“I founded Waxploitation with the goal of discovering and creating unique music projects. The last three artists I developed were Danger Mouse, Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells. Last year though, I started to feel drawn to other passions and decided to take a sabbatical from the music industry. This led me to a sort of blend between art photography and war photography. I went to fairly dangerous places like Afghanistan, Haiti and Juarez with the goal of doing artistic photography in the midst of the chaos. Haiti was the first place I visited, and while poverty was horrific in places like Cite Soleil, but the people, especially the kids, had an unbelievable sense of humor.

Even though I was there for limited amounts of time, I took hundreds of photographs of people. When the earthquake struck and killed 200,000 people in almost an instant, I could recall those people as easily as I could my family. Now they feel like friends quite possibly dead or severely injured. But I don’t know their names or anything tangible about their identities I’ll never have the ability to know if they survived. My ‘Haiti’ folder feels like a cemetery.”

YouTube is taking advantage of their new venture Vevo by introducing a “Music Discovery Project” dubbed “Disco” for short, where searching for an artist generates a playlist of recommended videos. It’s like YouTube’s response to Pandora and Last.fm and is similar to the Genius option on iTunes. Working off the slogan “Find > Mix > Watch,” the site produces a playlist based on the artist search, then users can add and delete videos to create a playlist that is stored in their profile, Tech Crunch reports.

For instance, a search for Pearl Jam results in a playlist stocked with Eddie Vedder & Co., plus videos by fellow Seattle grunge all-stars like Nirvana and Soundgarden and ’90s rockers like Smashing Pumpkins and Black Crowes. Not much for “discovery” as the vast majority of Pearl Jam fans are already well aware of these other bands, but the Pearl Jam list might introduce fans to the handful of obscure Screaming Trees music videos that YouTube suggests. Similarly, a “mix tape” of Madonna comes filled with Kylie Minogue, George Michael, and Michael and Janet Jackson.

Here’s a surefire sign Disco is still under construction: Search “Radiohead” and the other suggested artists are simply “head” bands like Diamond Head, Big Head Todd & the Monsters and Murray Head. Is Disco revolutionary? Probably not, but it’ll likely steal a few clicks from other music recommendation sites. Considering YouTube’s big push behind Vevo, it’s a little strange that this new music feature is launching via regular YouTube and not its new music site, which the record labels prefer you visit.

Related Stories:

• Vevo Arrives: Test Driving the Labels’ New Video Streaming Site
• Video Sites Announce New Music Features: Hulu Adds Artist Pages, Vevo Sets Launch
• Warner Music, YouTube Reportedly Strike Deal to Restore Videos

You may not know Ming + FS by name, but there’s a good chance you’ve heard them before. The duo’s laid-back, instrumental drum and bass has percolated through numerous TV shows, including CSI: NY and CSI: Miami, and even a Nissan commercial. So, if there’s something vaguely familiar about that combination of rubbery horn stabs and laid-back snare that pops up during tonight’s premiere episode of The Buried Life, there may be a reason.

The track “Simple Mathematics” (from the Om Records album The Human Condition) is about “making hard trick seem easy,” explains Ming. “When the elements of a song, as disparate they may seem, fall into place, the symphony created is one that only a brilliant equation can represent … or not.” (If anyone wants to write that equation in the comments, please feel free.)

As The Buried Life crew schemes a way into the Playboy Mansion, Ming + FS ripple along. It’s a place Ming, for one, is happy to be. He digs the concept for the show and has long been trying to live life to fullest — or “Live hard, die trying” as he translates it.

“I’ve been knocking things off my bucket list since I knew what a bucket list was.”

What’s been on that list? Jumping a bike over a pit of fire. Playing the Coachella festival. Leaping out of an airplane. Swimming with dolphins.

The latest addition is a little more domestic: “I just got married, so having some kids might be next.”
In the meantime, he’s been busy, having recently finished a remix of “Telephone” for Lady Gaga, and working on new material by 33Hz and Youth Group’s Toby Martin. Hopefully, he’ll finish up his solo album (“a combo of indie rock and electro dance music with a bunch of great guest vocalists”) this year. Listen carefully to the first episode of The Buried Life and you can still hear one of his classic productions.

The Buried Life premieres tonight — Monday, Jan. 18 at 10pm — on MTV.

More songs from Episode 1 of The Buried Life:
Javelin — “Tryouts”
Othello feat. DJ Vajra — “Same Team Suckas”
The Wylde Bunch – “Tale Of Two Cities”
Passion Pit — “Swimming In The Flood”

Photo: Flanigan/FilmMagic
After VH1 relaunched Behind the Music in 2009 with specials on Lil Wayne and 50 Cent, the long-running documentary series will head to VH1 Classic in 2010 with eight new half-hour specials dedicated to some of the biggest artists in rock history. Behind the Music Remastered will feature episodes on John Lennon, Metallica, Genesis, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. While all of these artists have previously been featured on BTM, the Remastered series will pick up where those episodes left off with new interviews and footage from the past decade. Behind the Music Remastered will premiere on VH1 Classic on Saturday, February 6th.

Want to look back at these artists’ career right now? Get a look at our galleries:

• Metallica: Three Decades of Metal Mayhem
• Genesis: Photos From “Chapter & Verse”
• John Lennon’s New York Years

Related Stories:

• New “Behind the Music” Show Digs Into Lil Wayne, 50 Cent’s Lives
• VH1 to Bring Back “Behind The Music” with Lil Wayne, Scott Weiland and Others

Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, Tiësto, Passion Pit, Groove Armada and Major Lazer are among the first acts confirmed to headline the 2010 Ultra Music Festival, the top outdoor festival for electronic music fans. This year’s fest will close out the 25th annual Winter Music Conference on Mar. 26 and 27 in Miami, Fla.

Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell takes a look at Vampire Weekend’s highly anticipated second disc Contra in this week’s New Music Report. The New York quartet don’t futz with the formula they developed on their 2008 debut too much, which turns out to be a good thing on tracks like “White Sky,” which rides some sparkling Afropop guitar riffs and tribal beats. But there are a few tunes where they deviate from their straight-and-narrow: “Giving Up the Gun” is a sweet electro-pop tune, and standout “Cousins” comes on like a prepster’s interpretation of punk rock. Singer Ezra Koening still references things like skiing trips to the Alps and the sculptor Richard Serra, and while the disc can get cute at times, there’s a lot of interesting instrumentation underscoring the action, like textured synthesizers and thumb-pianos, that ensure Vampire Weekend are no indie-hype flash in the pan.

Check out more 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.]