White Stripes Snuggle up to Best Buy
Too bad red and white tends to clash with yellow

Remember those cool White Stripes "Conquest" singles we told you about back in November? (Not the Spanish one, though that certainly is cool too.) You know, the ones with the B-sides featuring Beck? Well, when the singles were originally released, they were available only on 7" vinyl and digitally.

That was fine if you were a record collector or a downloader, or one of the increasingly few stores that sells vinyl, or a digital music outlet. But what if you wanted to own those precious B-sides on CD? What if your store doesn't sell vinyl or downloads? WHAT THEN?

Best Buy to the rescue! Starting this week, the big box ogre is selling a five-track "Conquest" EP, featuring all of the B-sides. It's available as a free bonus if you buy Icky Thump from Best Buy, or you can purchase the EP all by itself. (Sorry, if you already bought Icky Thump from Best Buy, you can't go back and get the EP for free. Them's the breaks.)

Thanks to Anthony Miano for the heads up.

Death Cab's Narrow Stairs Gets Tracklist, Release Date

You need dexterity to navigate Narrow Stairs, but all you'll get here is a tracklist and a release date to help you through Death Cab for Cutie's previously reported sixth full-length studio offering.

Stairs follows up 2005's Plans and descends May 13 on Atlantic, according to a Billboard.com report. This thing packs in 11 tracks, boasting typically heavy-handed titles like "I Will Possess Your Heart", "You Can Do Better Than Me (But I Can't Do Better Than You)", and the truly devastating "Your New Twin Size Bed". Death Cab, you slay me.

UPDATE: Apparently, the tracklist reported on Billboard.com and printed below is not yet finalized.

Also, the first single is slated to be "I Will Possess Your Heart".

Opening track "Bixby Canyon Bridge" apparently clocks in at nine minutes, so you may want to save that one for the end of your mixtapes. A Narrow Stairs tour, meanwhile, is inevitable but not yet announced. For now, we'll have to settle for appearances at Coachella and Bonnaroo.

In other news from camp Death (ooh, spooky!), Chris Walla's Field Manual is on shelves now, and a digital version of Ben Gibbard's Kurt Cobain: About a Son score with Steve Fisk will be arriving shortly (with a vinyl version to follow, er, longly). [MORE...]

British Sea Power Extend Tour
Get that faraway look in their eyes just thinking about it

Perfectly timed with the North American release of their new album, Do You Like Rock Music? (Why yes, in fact, I do; thanks for asking), British Sea Power have announced an extension of their previously reported North American tour. After all, it's hard to convert the masses to the power of rock when you don't go anywhere. Just ask your local bar band.

The UK foursome's new dates mean they now have a full schedule up until the end of May, and as they cross the North American terrain, they'll team up with the Rosebuds, Colourmusic, and the 1900s on various dates. More immediately, the band will continue its European invasion with a February 15 show in Brussels. Fans in Frankfurt, Germany take note: BSP have canceled a February 19 gig at Cooky's. [MORE...]

Modest Mouse, Of Montreal, Diplo Set for Rothbury Fest
Plus: Black Keys, Flosstradamus, Busdriver, Secret Machines, Drive-By Truckers, Juan Maclean

Summer festivals can feel more like bummer festivals when it comes to all the beloved bands you have to miss in order to catch all the even more beloved bands playing at the same time. That probably won't be the case at this year's inaugural Rothbury festival (no, not this one), however, as most frequent readers of this here website should have no trouble deciding given a lineup like this.

Modest Mouse or Dave Matthews Band? Of Montreal or Slightly Stoopid? Bettye Lavette or Colbie Caillat? Diplo or John Mayer? Shit, this is easy!*

Other acts set to descend upon the Double JJ Ranch in Rothbury, Michigan for this Bonnaroo-like event: the Black Keys, Gogol Bordello, Drive-By Truckers, Secret Machines, Beth Orton, Sage Francis, Flosstradamus, the Juan Maclean, Busdriver, the Crystal Method (DJ set), the Dresden Dolls, and, eh, Gomez, plus a bunch of stuff like Gov't Mule and the Disco Biscuits. Additional performers will come to light in the coming weeks.

Rothbury pops off the Independence Day weekend of July 3-6, 2008, and like pretty much everything else live music-related nowadays, it's not just about live music: Rothbury is also committed to various environmental concerns, and will even donate solar panels to a local school via the Solar Schools Program.

* We're merely speculating, mind you, as set times have not yet been announced.

Laetitia Sadier's Monade Craft Monstre Cosmic, Tour

Though its beginnings lie in the bedroom of Stereolab singer, lyricist, and multi- instrumentalist Laetitia Sadier, Monade has slowly but surely invited more and more folks to the sleepover, transforming into the full-fledged musical unit it is today.

Sadier is still at the helm, joined at present by bassist Marie Merlet, keyboardist/guitarist Nicolas Etienne, drummer David Loquier, and multi-instrumentalist Joe Watson (also of Stereolab). Monade will issue its third LP (and second as a full band), Monstre Cosmic, February 19 in the U.S. and February 18 in the UK via Too Pure/Duophonic. The disc also features guest vocals by Luna Parker's Rachel Ortas and string work by members of the Bordeaux Conservatoire. And, like just about anything Laetitia sings over, it is lovely, and there are synths aplenty.

Monade have a handful of dates in Europe and the UK in February and March. Stereolab, too, have a show on the way: July 19 at Tønsberg, Norway's Slottsfjell Festival. [MORE...]

Man Man, Yeasayer to Tour U.S. Together This Spring

Bound by their love of the music of the world, off-kilter rhythms, and innovations in facial hair, Philly weirdos Man Man and Brooklyn weirdos Yeasayer will embark on a joint tour of the U.S. in April.

The two bands will join forces for nearly a month beginning April 12 in Boston, with Man Man ducking out briefly to fulfill their duties in weirding out Paris Hilton at Coachella. The tour, conveniently enough for them and us, ends just as the two bands are set to jump the pond for this May's ATP vs. Pitchfork festival.

Man Man have those Rabbit Habits of theirs to attend to April 8 on Anti-, and a slew of new dates, including a hometown record release party with the Dirty Projectors and a full-on UK/European tour that kicks off in mid-May. Yeasayer, too, have a mess of new dates since the last time we ran 'em down, including their own brief UK tour following the Pitchfork fest. [MORE...]

Islands' Nick Thorburn Talks Arm's Way, Side Projects
"This is a record that requires concentration, and I think it's a good record to help someone stay sober. It's a record for alcoholics."

Photo by Alex Wagner

Islands make strange, scattershot pop music, but as we know well, even the weird ones have their day in the sun. After making a sizable splash with 2006's Return to the Sea, Islands will return May 20 with Arm’s Way, which they'll release through new label Anti-. Yesterday, we spoke with Islands leader Nick Thorburn (formerly known as Nick Diamonds) about the music of Arm’s Way, as well as his various side projects.

Pitchfork: The new album is called Arm's Way, which is yet another winking title from you guys. Care to explain?

NT: The band is based in Quebec. It's basically, French-Canadian people don't pronounce their H's. So, it's "Harm's Way" without the "H".

Pitchfork: Ha, that oughta clear up any confusion for the American audience, then.

NT: It's your standard play on words. It's just what you might call a pun of sorts. This is a record that's very physical and I just like the imagery that "arm" conjures. It's got a menacing tone to it. You can think of arms in the military sense, or arms in the spiritual sense, too. Like someone reaching out to lift you up to a higher place. There are all these connotations that are in conflict, and I think that's what drew me to this title.

Pitchfork: I haven't heard the record beyond "The Arm", but the press material I've got suggests it's "far more centered" than the last one, but also "sprawling" and "symphonic". Those seem like two competing notions.

NT: Well, the thing about progressive rock is that, you know, it requires a lot of focus. It requires one to be centered to perform it, but it also progresses throughout. Instead of repeating a part, it moves to a different part, and that's where the progression comes in. Like I said, this is a record that requires concentration, and I think it's a good record to help someone, you know, stay sober. It's that record for alcoholics. At least if you're going to be playing it, which we will be. [MORE...]

Shearwater's Meiburg Tours With Bill Callahan
Americanarama

Photo by Kathryn Yu

From Texas to parts east to Texas anew, wherever the (dude from) Shearwater runs, Bill Callahan is sure to follow. Shearwater main man Jonathan Meiburg will hit the road sans the rest of the 'water with the one they used to call Smog on a winter tour of the South beginning later this week.

Meiburg's Shearwater have reportedly gotten pretty damn close to letting us in on all the pieces of their forthcoming LP, Rook, but Matador isn't parting with the knowledge just yet. Try getting the skinny straight from the source at the following spots. [MORE...]

DFA, Adrock Remix M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" on New EP
Also: Diplo remix with Bun B and Rich Boy that you already know and love

You've heard it all by now: M.I.A. flies like paper, gets high like planes, samples Combat Rock and gets stuck in your, er, brains. "Paper Planes", the Kala standout-- and, when joined by Diplo, Bun B and Rich Boy, Pitchfork's #4 track of 2007-- has been ringing out from every Hummer and hot dog stand since its release last summer. Now, M.I.A. has collected five fine remixes of the gunslingin', kid-singin' track for the Homeland Security Remixes EP.

In addition to Diplo's feted "Street remix" with Bun and Rich Boy, there's the Blaqstarr take with Rye Rye and Afrikan Boy, Beastie Boy Adrock's "Remix for the Children", one from the DFA, and one from Scottie B.

The Homeland Security Remixes EP is out this very moment digitally, and will get a physical release March 4 from Interscope.

As for M.I.A., she recently visited Liberia with 4Real TV, and you'll see her next at Mexico's MX Beat Festival, with other live appearances on the way at Coachella and Bonnaroo. [MORE...]

Sonic Youth Plan Career-Spanning Art Exhibit

The extraordinary magnitude of Sonic Youth's, ahem, sonic influence is pretty much gospel at this point. But no less pronounced are the band's contributions to the visual culture, by way of artists such as Christopher Wool, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Raymond Pettibon, and Richards Kern and Prince.

These folks and more will be celebrated in a forthcoming traveling museum exhibition Sonic Youth is preparing, according a New York magazine report.

"We're putting together this museum show that's utilizing all the artists that we've worked with on different covers and concepts, and that's going to happen for two or three years," Thurston Moore said during a Marc Jacobs party in New York City last week. "It's going to happen in young museums; there's one outside of Paris, there's one in Malmö, Sweden."

The New York story suggests the exhibit will launch this June at the Lieu International des Formes Emergentes (LiFE) in Saint-Nazaire, France, while the Whitney in New York is being considered as well. What's more, Sonic Youth hope to perform at each of the exhibition sites.

The band also plans to start writing its Rather Ripped follow-up this spring.

In other related and not necessarily related news, Daydream Nation the album is headed to a venue Down Under near you, while Daydream Nation the movie should turn up in theaters before long.

A short film co-starring Obama-backer Kim Gordon may be headed to a festival near you soon too, while a DVD directed by the aforementioned Kern and featuring music by Mr. Moore is bound for an adult video store near you March 18. And that's to say nothing of the Sonic Youth member-boasting Rhys Chatham discs due March 4 or the Sonic Youth-boasting "From the Basement" episode airing Stateside March 14. Gotta catch 'em all! [MORE...]

Deerhoof's Satomi Doubles Up for Oneone Project

The recent addition of fourth Deerhoofer Ed Rodriguez should free vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki to strike more of those adorable poses in the live setting. It has also, it seems, freed her to pursue some extracurricular musical interests.

Oneone is a new music-making outfit comprised of Satomi and Saya Ueno of Japan's much-loved Tenniscoats and Maher Shalal Hash Baz's touring band. The fledging duo will play one of its very first gigs tonight, February 13, at Aquarius Records in San Francisco. Billed as an "acoustic" set, the in-store begins at 6 p.m. Pacific this evening.

We can also look forward to a Oneone album in the near future, boasting the mixing prowess of Deerhoof's Greg Saunier and the label stamp of Japan's P-Vine imprint. Oneone also hope to hit up Japan in June for more live action.

Before all that, however, Deerhoof have a little live action of their own brewing. [MORE...]

Art Brut Deliver New Digital Single/EP

Brothers and sisters! Art Brut have a brand new single headed your way, and, you guessed it, it's for decibel-baiting It's a Bit Complicated jam "Pump Up the Volume" (not actually a M/A/R/R/S cover, mind you).

"Pump" hit UK digital retailers this week via Mute, and e-buyers can opt for one of two formats: the single-track version, or a three-track EP boasting "Pump" and two new songs, "Wasted Week-End" and "Our Parents Record Collection".

The mighty Art Brut have tacked on an epic three-date tour of Switzerland since our last report, and they of course have gigs in the UK, Spain, and Italy leading up to it. The next pops off in Dundee, Scotland tonight. [MORE...]

Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)