With their fourth album "Secret are Sinister" under their belts, Brooklyn indie-rockers Longwave are hoping the release of this album will go better than the last. Challenges like Hurricane Katrina, a record label merger, and a canceled tour plagued the release of their previous album "There's A Fire." After some encouragement, the band decided to record another record.

It's natural that the Flaming Lips' new dramatic feature film, Christmas on Mars - conceived by bandleader Wayne Coyne and billed as "a fantastical film freak-out" - should contain all of the psychedelia, drama, humor and hopefulness that fans have come to love about the band's music itself.

They met in Brooklyn where the duo of guitarist Tommy Eisner and drummer Linda Beecroft created the bluesy psychedelic folk-rock of Golden Animals. After the release of their first EP in 2006, they moved to southern California for a more laidback atmosphere to write their full-length.

Minneapolis' Dan Wilson has been known as many things: frontman in Semisonic and guitarist in Trip Shakespeare, Grammy Award winner for writing The Dixie Chick's "Not Ready To Make Nice," and producer for two of Mike Doughty's albums. He's also worked with musicians like Rachael Yamagata, Mandy Moore, Jeremy Messersmith, and Jason Mraz. In 2007, Dan Wilson released a solo album, "Free Life" on Rick Rubin's American Recordings. With all of that on his musical resume, he still calls the Twin Cities home.

Ryan Adams may have left behind the confines of the "alt-country" genre long ago, but the moniker still tends to cling to him - despite having spent a fair chunk of the past decade-plus making music that has drawn from a broad and deep well of influences.