Monthly Archives: July 2008

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet. The Band: Spitzer The Buzz: French electronic duo with no interest in escorts and a penchant for music that sounds like bright green sine-waves. Listen If: You have a fondness for fat keyboards and skinny beats. Key Track: The remix of Kylie Minogue’s “In My Arms,” which sets the Aussie diva’s soulful vocals against spitting synths. The Band: Air France The Buzz: Bright pop duo deliver everything the Swedes have taught us to expect: sweeping synth-strings, sweet pop vocals and skyrocketing synthesizers. Added plus: Air France are more subdued than most. Listen If: You fondly recall St. Etienne, or like music that implies more than it states outright. Key Track: “June Evenings,” which buries a light, heavenly melody under layers of fizzy atmospherics. The Band: Kasai All-Stars The Buzz: Endlessly inventive Congolese outfit is the second band selected for the mighty Congotronics series, and their blend of bustling thumb pianos, ecstatic chants and otherworldly rhythms is a long, gleeful trip into the surreal. Listen If: The words “you’ve never heard anything like this before” are your idea of ultimate praise. Key Track: “Quick as White,” whose sublime morse-code rhythms quickly turn space age and spectacular. Continue reading →

Who: Los Angeles’ Metro Station, a sugarcoated emo quartet led by the older siblings of two Disney stars ? including one who’s currently topping the charts. Sounds Like: Led by singer/guitarist Trace Cyrus (yes, Miley’s old brother), Metro Station bridge the gap between Fall Out Boy’s emo pop and High School Musical, especially on tracks liked their million-selling synthed-out single “Shake It.” “We never thought this one would succeed,” Cyrus says. “At first we just had the chorus. Our manager told us, ‘You need to write verses for this!’” Vital Stats: Continue reading →

Choose Or Lose & Kanye West Present: Homecoming

MTV and Kanye West try to help a few of the veterans who’ve fallen through the cracks since coming home.

Related Artists

• Kanye West

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Season 3 finalist Amy Adams celebrates her birthday today.  Everybody remembers Amy from her bright pink hair, fun personality and amazing voice.  After her time on Idol, she debuted on broadway as the narrator of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolr Dreamcoat in September, 2005.  In regard to her personal life, Amy married Ross Vamer in October, 2004 and had a son in May, 2005.

Check out this fun photo of Amy performing from season 3.

americanidol.com warmly wishes Amy a very happy birthday! Continue reading →

American Idol will be well represented in the upcoming Teen Choice 2008 airing Monday, August 4 at 8/7c on FOX.  American Idol Winner David Cook along with runner-up David Archuleta, Season 6 Winner Jordin Sparks and Season 5 runner-up Katharine McPhee will be presenting awards in this year’s special.

Find out more about Teen Choice 2008. Continue reading →

FOX and the producers of “American Idol” have received information about a new mail fraud scam using sweepstakes award letters printed on what appears to be “American Idol” letterhead. The letter is sent to the attention of the “American Idol Sweepstakes Winner” and notifies recipients that they have been selected as a winner in the “‘American Idol’ Online Sweepstakes.” The letter contains fraudulent checks, a phone number to call, and instructions on how to claim the fake “prize” checks, all of which lead to losses for the recipient.

FOX, the producers of “American Idol,” and their subsidiary companies, do not sponsor or support any lottery, sweepstakes or prize contest that resembles the letter referred to above. The producers of “American Idol” are investigating this mail fraud in conjunction with local and national law enforcement agencies. If you receive a letter like this, please report it to the United States Postal Inspection Service at:
https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/forms/MailFraudComplaint.aspx.

Thank you. Continue reading →

It’s been a long time since themes.wordpress.net stopped accepting new themes. Since then most theme authors have been distributing their themes from their own sites, without a good centralized place for people to browse, search, comment on, and rate themes. With the success of the plugins directory, we’ve wanted to have those same [...] Continue reading →

I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever [...] Continue reading →