Adrian asuncion out loud draft 24 pg spread

OUT LOUD Making the sound of today pop

BOW DOWN TO RIHANNA THE BAJAN BOMBSHELL IS NO STRANGER TO CONTROVERSEY

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TRAVIS SCOTT THE WEEKND KANYE WEST

YEAH YEAH YEAHS KAREN O AND CO. RIDE A BRAND NEW WAVE

*101 WAYS TO DRESS UP FOR YOUR NEXT MUSIC FESTIVAL

TAME IMPALA

CURRENTS REVIEW ONE OF THE YEARS GREATEST HEARTBREAK RECORDS

A$AP ROCKY

AUGUST 2015

PARTYNEXTDOOR

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

By Ray Rogers Photography Matt Sav

CURRENTS - ONE OF THIS YEARS GREATEST HEARTBREAK RECORDS || NEW COUPLE ALERT

Bella Hadid + The Weeknd Go Public

By Alex Cramer

T

ame Impala fans would be wise to regard the band’s third album not as a Tame Impala album at all, but one by a band called something like Domesticated Eland. Although Kevin Parker once again plays virtually every note on this self-produced record, as he did on his previous two outings, the heady hit album Lonerism (2012) and its predecessor, 2010’s Innerspeaker, Currents sounds little like the work of Australia’s per-eminent psychedelic rock hero.

The pedal-laden guitars are low in the mix. Instead, analogue keyboards whirr through 13 glistening tracks. Parker’s falsetto invokes Brian Wilson and Panda Bear – specifically Panda Bear fronting Daft Punk. There is one seven-minute opus here, the opening track Let It Happen. Blissed-out and party-ready, it recalls Daft Punk’s recent combination of vintage synth washes and live instrumentation, Random Access Memories. It’s not the only one. There’s a kind of monomania too, bringing to

|| KANYE WEST

BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

By Zach Baron

It could’ve been any one of the seven albums west released this century, as fascinating a catalogue of celebrity, triumph, love, loss, terrible puns, pretty decent puns, that was ever fucking put together by a single artist.

mind Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak.

Change is the theme, and the dark, organ-laden opening couplets of New Person, Same Old Mistakes could be addressed to all those alienated fans hoping for the Antipodean groove-king’s meisterwerk and getting a thoughtful yacht-rock record instead. “I can just hear them now ‘How could you let us down’,” Parker breathes, “They don’t know what I’ve found/ I see it from this way round…”

Perspective is all. Currents is one of this year’s great heartbreak records, one told from the point of view of the leaver. Parker is the villain of his own piece, having broken up with his partner, Melody Prochet of the band Melody’s Echo Chamber. So although many will come expectantly to Currents for the next instalment of synapselulling wooze, and baulk at the “dorky white disco-funk” (Parker’s quip) that has taken over his muse, it is definitely worth sticking around, if only to hear the inside of a male brain arpeggiating.

MBDTF was just the record where he talked about all those things at once a portrait of a man seizing the spotlight, drowning in it, and then somehow finding a way to turn that harrowing experience into art. Anybody who wants to be famous or make music for a living should or do both at the same time should be forced to listen to MBDTF

The Victoria’s Secret model and the “Earned It” singer have kept their relationship private for months, but they were photographed leaving the Up and Down Nightclub hand-in-hand on Sept. 8. Bella looked super-hot in a navy blue Sahara Ray Swim Mimi One Piece with a scooped neck that showed off ample cleavage and serious side boob.

She rocked the one-piece underneath shiny high-waisted black pants with zipper details and completed the outfit with leather booties with a chunky red heel. So incredibly sexy — no wonder he couldn’t keep his hands off his lady!

Photo Splashnews

first. The rest of us are free to enjoy it for the bloody, hard won, titanic achievement that it is.

BOW DOWN TO RIHANNA The Bajan bombshell is no stranger to courting controversy.

Written by Robbie Jay Photography by Paolo Roversi

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obyn Rihanna Fenty was born in a parish in Barbados called St. Michael, to Monica (Braithwaite), an accountant, and Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor. Her mother is of Afro-Guyanese descent and her father has AfroBarbadian and English/Irish/Scottish ancestry (known as “Redlegs” in the Caribbean). Rihanna lived the life of a normal island girl going to Combermere, a top sixth form school. Rihanna won numerous beauty pageants and performed Mariah Carey “Hero” in a school talent show. Her life changed forever when one of her friends introduced her to Evan Rodgers, a producer from New York who was in Barbados for a vacation with his wife, who is a native. Rodgers arranged for her to go to New York to meet Jay Z, CEO of Def Jam Records. He heard her sing and knew she was going to be incredibly successful. She was 16 when she was signed to Def Jam. Since then, she’s amassed phenomenal success.

The youngest artist to score 12 number one singles in the US, Rihanna signed with Def Jam records at the age of 16. Since then, she’s become an international

sensation with hit songs such as “Umbrella,” “We Found Love,” and “Diamonds.”

Born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, on February 20, 1988 in Barbados, Rihanna signed with Def Jam records at age 16 and released her first album, which sold more than 2 million copies worldwide, in 2005. She went on to release more albums and hit songs, including “Unfaithful,” “Disturbia” and “Umbrella.” Rihanna has also won multiple awards including Grammys, MTV Video Music Awards and Billboard awards.

Early Life Singer Robyn Rihanna Fenty was born on February 20, 1988, in St. Michael Parish on the Caribbean island of Barbados. She is the eldest of three children born to Monica Fenty, an accountant, and Ronald Fenty, a warehouse supervisor. Rihanna’s childhood was marred by her father’s struggles with addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine and her parents’ marital problems—they divorced when she was 14 years old.

However, since that time, Rihanna’s father has managed

“One word

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NEVER

shy ”

use to describe Rihanna is

.

to conquer his addictions and the pair are now very close. “Now my dad is like the coolest person on the planet,” Rihanna says. “He doesn’t smother me. He lets me live my life. And he’s been like that a lot, even when I was younger. He would watch me making a mistake and he wouldn’t stop me. My dad, he lets me make it and then I learn.”

Rihanna also struggled with crippling headaches for several years during her childhood, a condition she attempted to hide from her friends and classmates so that they would not think she was abnormal. “I never expressed how I felt,” she remembers. “I always kept it in. I would go to school ... you would never know there was something wrong with me.”

As a teenager, Rihanna turned to singing as a release from her troubles at home. She formed a girl group with two classmates; when they were 15 years old, they scored an audition with music producer Evan Rodgers, who was visiting the island with his Barbadian wife.

Rogers was awed by the precociously beautiful and phenomenally talented Rihanna, to the unfortunate

detriment of her two friends. “The minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn’t exist,” he admitted.

Less than a year later, when Rihanna was only 16 years old, she left Barbados to move in with Rogers and his wife in Connecticut and work on recording a demo album. “When I left Barbados, I didn’t look back,” Rihanna recalled. “I wanted to do what I had to do, even if it meant moving to America.”

-Def Jam Records

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n January 2005, Rogers landed Rihanna an audition for Def Jam Records and its newly minted president, the legendary rapper Jay-Z. “I was in the lobby just shaking,” she recalled.

However, once Rihanna opened her voice to sing she regained her composure. “I remember staring into everybody’s eyes in the room while I was singing, and at that point, I was fearless,” she said. “But the minute I stopped singing, I was like, ‘oh my God, Jay-Z is sitting right in front of me.’”

The hip-hop icon was every bit as wowed by Rihanna’s stunning voice and commanding presence as Rogers had been two years earlier, and he signed her on the spot.

“We made a little Godfather joke,” Jay-Z remembered.

“We said the only way she could leave was through the window.”

Only eight months later, in August 2005, Rihanna released her first single, “Pon de Replay,” a reggaeinfluenced club track that skyrocketed to No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart and announced Rihanna as the next big up-and-coming pop star. Her first album, Music of the Sun, released later that month, reached No. 10 on the Billboard albums chart and also featured the single “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want.” Rihanna released her second album, A Girl Like Me, the next year, spawning two major hits in “Unfaithful” and “SOS,” Rihanna’s first No. 1 single.

‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ In 2007, Rihanna effected a transformation from cute teen pop princess to fully fledged superstar and sex symbol with her third album, Good Girl Gone Bad, fueled by its smash hit lead single “Umbrella,” featuring Jay-Z. “It shows such growth for her as an artist,” Jay-Z said about the track. “If you listen to the lyrics to that song, you know the depth and how far she’s come.”

Love,” which features DJ Calvin Harris and won the 2013 Grammy Award for best short form music video.

Rumored Relationship Rihanna has also made headlines in her personal life, although often for circumstances beyond her control.

Rihanna first made gossip column headlines in 2006 when rumors swirled that she was having an affair with her mentor, Jay-Z. Both she and Jay-Z have always dismissed such allegations as ridiculous. “At first I was like, ‘Ha ha, it’s funny,’” Rihanna said. “Now I just ignore it and I’m numb to it. You cannot stop people from saying what they want to say.”

Personal Life In 2009, Rihanna again made headlines again, becoming the center of a media firestorm after a domestic violence incident in which her then-boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted her before an awards show. The incident sparked a huge public outpouring of support for Rihanna, and she has since become a spokesperson against domestic violence. “This happened to me,” she said in an interview with Diane Sawyer. “It can happen to anyone.”

Rihanna was later romantically involved with Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp, but the pair have since split ways.

Since she first appeared on the pop music scene in 2005, this Barbadian pop star has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted run at the top of the music industry.

For nearly six years, it has been virtually impossible to listen to the radio or enter a dance club without hearing one of Rihanna’s infectiously catchy songs. But beyond the constant stream of hits and her unflappable public image, Rihanna acknowledges that she is still just a vulnerable young woman who has experienced much adversity in recent years, and often struggles to keep it together.

“Four Five Seconds This is a pretty slick new jam by Rihanna, Kanye West and Paul McCartney”

“Umbrella” topped the Billboard singles chart and earned Rihanna her first Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. The album reached No. 2 on the charts and also featured the singles “Don’t Stop the Music” and “Shut Up and Drive.” Good Girl Gone Bad: The Remixes, released the following year, scored two new further hits in “Disturbia” and “Take a Bow.” Continuing her onslaught of hit albums, Rihanna released Rated R in 2009 with the singles “Hard” and “Rude Boy.” Her 2010 album, Loud, was once again an enormous commercial and critical success behind the songs “What’s My Name,” “Only Girl (In the World)” and “S&M.” Besides her own laundry list of hit songs, Rihanna is also featured on a host of mega hits by other artists, including Jay-Z’s “Run this Town,” Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” and Kanye West’s “All of the Lights.”

In 2011, Rihanna released her sixth studio album: Talk That Talk. The album included the song “We Found

“I put my guard up so hard,” she said of the aftermath of her domestic violence incident with Chris Brown in 2009. “I didn’t want people to see me cry. I didn’t want people to feel bad for me. It was a very vulnerable time in my life, and I refused to let that be the image. I wanted them to see me as, ‘I’m fine, I’m tough.’ I put that up until it felt real.”

In 2012, Rihanna appeared to be reconnecting with Brown. The pair worked together on the song “Birthday Cake” released that year. Rihanna also spoke very candidly with Oprah Winfrey about her relationship with Brown that August. She told Winfrey that Brown may have been the love of her life and she has developed “a very close friendship” with him.

In Recent Years On her 2012 hit album Unapologetic, Rihanna turned

out such hits as “Diamonds” and “Stay.” She also worked with Coldplay on the hit “Princess of China” and rapper Eminem on “Love the Way You Lie.” The following year, Rihanna reached the top of the charts with another collaboration with Eminem entitled “The Monster.”

Known for her wild style, Rihanna made headlines for the sheer dress she wore to the Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Awards in June 2014. She was there to receive the CFDA’s Fashion Icon Award and told the crowd that “Fashion has always been my defense mechanism,” according to an Associated Press report. Rihanna acknowledged that there were some rules to fashion, but explained that “rules are meant to be broken.” Around this time, Rihanna made a bold professional move as well. She switched from the Def Jam label to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.

Outside the U.S., she holds multiple MOBO Awards from the UK (including Best International Act in 2007 and 2011) and multiple IFPI Awards from Europe, MTV VMAs from every region, the BRIT Award for Best International Female Artist in 2011 and 2012, Capricho Awards from Brazil, MuchMusic Video Awards from Canada, NRJ Music Awards from France, and no less than 30 Barbados Music Awards from her native country.

As her performing career soars, Rihanna continues to push boundaries in both music and fashion. She is constantly reinventing herself and has an amazing ability to identify and help set trends, thus she has become an international style icon and cover girl. Everything from her cutting edge hairstyles to her immaculate fashion sense are heavily monitored in the glossy pages of high fashion magazines worldwide.

Rihanna’s Influence is also proven by her social network stats and online views. She has the most viewed YouTube page of any solo artist with over 2 billion views. She is the biggest female artist on Facebook with over 54 million fans and she has over 17 million twitter followers. And she puts this influence to good use with her philanthropic efforts with DKMS (leukemia) American Cancer Society.

Rihanna also maintains ongoing arrangements as spokesperson for Armani and Vita Coco products.

Recently, Rihanna wrapped up filming Universal’s Battleship directed by Peter Berg. She will make her feature film debut alongside Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard. The film is set to be released May 2012.

Rihanna’s impressive discography and a growing collection of the music industry’s most cherished awards have proven that this is only the beginning. With her beauty, fashion and business sense to match, the Island girl turned international superstar will continue to rock the world for years to come. The journey continues!

Together with Rogers and his partner, Carl Sturken, Rihanna composed almost a dozen songs, taking inspiration from dancehall and ragamuffin which are the musical culture of her origin and blended them with R&B tunes. “My music is mostly Caribbean beats mixed with R&B,” she described eagerly. “I don’t want to be pigeon holed into being just a dance artist because I can sing too. I have ballads on the album as well as upbeat tracks.”

Rihanna is reportedly dating Leonardo DiCaprio’s friend Richie Akiva.

The R&B superstar and Hollywood heartthrob have been rumoured to have been romancing each other since New Year’s Eve (31.12.14) which they celebrated in St. Barths and they have been spotted together on numerous occasions at various night spots.

However, it has now been claimed the reason for their numerous liaisons is that Rihanna is actually dating club mogul Richie Akiva, who has been pals with DiCaprio for years, and the two stars are just friends.

A source told the New York Daily News newspaper’s Confidenti@l column: “Richie was with Rihanna in St. Barth’s - that’s where it started. They’ve been hanging out together a lot.”

During the January break to St. Barths, DiCaprio is said to have gone off to enjoy his vacation and left Rihanna and Richie spend time with just each other.

Rihanna has spent most of New York Fashion week hanging out at Richie’s Up & Down club and during a party hosted by the ‘FourFiveSeconds’ hitmaker’s exboyfriend Drake, Richie gave her a shout out and got the DJ to dedicate a track to her.

A club goer on the night said: “She’s not showing up with Leo, she’s showing up with Richie. I’ve been at 25 to 30 clubs where Rihanna was hanging out. If anyone else had done that, she would’ve been p***ed.”

Even though Rihanna was seen leaving Up & Down on Valentine’s Day (14.02.15) within minutes of DiCaprio she had been partying with Richie to celebrate the romantic night.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Karen O and Co. ride a brand new wave

By Craig Marks / Photo by Robert Maxwell

D

iscovered in the wake of the Strokes’ popularity and the subsequent garage rock revival, New York’s art punk trio the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are comprised of singer Karen O, guitarist Nicolas Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs wrote a slew of songs at their first rehearsal and soon wound up supporting the Strokes and the White Stripes, earning a significant buzz for their arty yet sexy take on garage punk. In late 2001, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their self-titled debut EP, which they recorded with Boss Hog’s Jerry Teel, on their own Shifty label. Early the next year the band stepped into the international spotlight, appearing at South by Southwest, touring the U.S. with Girls Against Boys and Europe with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and headlining their own U.K. tour. Wichita Recordings distributed the group’s EP in the U.K. and Touch and Go reissued it in the States. In between tours, the group spent 2002 putting the finishing touches on its fulllength debut and playing American dates with SleaterKinney, Liars, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Late that year, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released the Machine EP to tide fans over before their first full-length. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs moved to Interscope for their debut album, 2003’s Fever to Tell. Boasting a cleaner sound and more eclectic songwriting than their EPs, the album continued their critical acclaim and also won them a fair amount of commercial success: the gorgeous ballad “Maps” became a hit in 2004 and pushed Fever to Tell to gold status that year. Karen O also moved to Los Angeles in 2004, making the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a bicoastal band.

The group took some time to pursue individual projects in 2005. O loaned her vocals to “Hello Tomorrow,” a collaboration with producer Squeak E. Clean that provided the soundtrack to a Nike shoe commercial directed by Spike Jonze, while Zinner recorded with the side project Head Wound City and also had a book of photographs, I Hope You Are All Happy Now, published. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs reconvened in the studio that year to record their second album with Clean as producer; jokingly, Clean said that the album was about O’s cat and would be called Coco Beware, but the album’s real title, Show Your Bones, was revealed soon after. Released in spring 2006, the album was the band’s most mature, polished work yet, and reached number 11 on the album charts. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs spent the rest of the year touring in support of the album, and returned in summer 2007 with the Is Is EP, a collection of newly recorded versions of songs written in between the band’s two albums. It’s Blitz!, which took the band’s sound in a more streamlined, electronic direction, arrived in spring 2009. Frontrunners of the New York rock revival that erupted at the turn of the millennium, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were about as fun as an arty punk band could get: a swirl of dangerous riffs, stomping propulsion and the sexy howl of Karen O, who dressed in tattered clothes, flung beer at crowds and sounded like she’d eaten Pat Benatar for breakfast.

The excited splatter of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ early records eventually gave way to a more focused sound and even the occasional tender ballad — in 2004 the Yeah Yeah

Yeahs scored an MTV hit with the rather gorgeous love song “Maps” — without losing its vibrant oddness. By decade’s end, Karen O was flinging her beer at much, much larger crowds. Karen O (born Karen Ozelek) and guitarist Nick Zinner originally met as students at Ohio’s arty Oberlin Univeristy in the late Nineties. The pair decided to make music together, originally conceiving their group as a folk duo, but soon veered in the opposite direction, drawing on by the late 1970s New York and Ohio art-punk scenes.

They recruited drummer Brian Chase, a college friend of O’s and on the strength of their early demos, earned opening gigs for the Strokes and White Stripes.

In 2001, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ self-released, self-titled EP, which included the stomping rocker “Bang” (which had the immortal line “as a fuck son, you suck”) and the shout-along anthem “Our Time.” The band garnered attention both in the U.S. and abroad, and appearances at the South by Southwest Music Festival and tours of the U.S. and U.K. throughout 2002 generated further buzz. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs signed to Interscope Records and released their first full-length record, Fever to Tell (Number 55), in 2003. Fever to Tell didn’t clean up their sound much but still proved the band’s breakthrough record, thanks in large part to “Maps.” The follow-up LP, 2006’s more restrained Show Your Bones, debuted at Number 11 in the U.S. and Number 7 in the U.K. and earned the band a Grammy nomination. By this time the Yeah Yeahs were headlining festivals around the world and their members were pursuing side projects in their spare time — most notably O.’s soundtrack work for the 2009 film Where The Wild Things Are. The band recorded much of 2009’sIt’s Blitz! (Number 22) at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas; ironically, the rural location made for some of the band’s most electronic, most danceable music yet. The album added dense layers of synthesizer to the band’s already heavy aesthetic, most notably on lead single “Zero,” a pulsating disco burner that finished ninth on Rolling Stone’s best songs of 2009. The album was perhaps the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ best-reviewed yet, and the band’s U.S. tour included a stop at Bonnaroo.

An American indie rock band formed in New York City in 2000. The group is composed of vocalist and pianist Karen O, guitarist and keyboardist Nick Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase. They are complemented in live performances by second guitarist David Pajo, who joined as a touring member in 2009 and replaced Imaad Wasif who had previously held this role. According to an interview that aired during the ABC network’s Live from Central Park SummerStage series, the band’s name was taken from modern New York City vernacular.

The band has recorded three studio albums; the first, Fever to Tell, was released in 2003. The second, Show Your Bones, was released in 2006 and was named the second best album of the year by NME. Their third studio album, It’s Blitz!, was released on 31 March 2009 in the USA and on 6 April 2009 in the rest of the world.

Behind the scenes with Karen O at OUTLOUD studios.

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he Story Karen O and Brian Chase first met as students at Oberlin College in Ohio in the late ‘90s, where Chase was a jazz student at the conservatory.

Karen then transferred to New York University, and while in New York met Zinner in a local bar, where they formed an “instant connection”. During this time they also shared a loft in Manhattan with future members of the band Metric. The two formed an acoustic duo called “Unitard”, but soon decided to “shake things up a bit” by forming a “trashy, punky, grimy” band modeled after the art student, avant-punk bands Karen O. was exposed to at Oberlin. After the drummer they recruited initially bowed out, Chase joined the line-up.

The band wrote a slew of songs at their first rehearsal and soon wound up supporting The Strokes and The White Stripes, earning a significant buzz for their arty and garage punk scene.

In late 2001, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their self-titled debut EP, which they recorded with Boss Hog’s Jerry Teel, on their own Shifty label. Early the next year the band stepped into the international spotlight, appearing at South by Southwest, touring the U.S. with Girls Against Boys and Europe with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and headlining their own U.K. tour. Wichita Recordings distributed the group’s EP in the U.K. and Touch and Go reissued it in the States.

The band released their debut album, Fever to Tell, which received several strong critical reviews and sold more than 750,000 copies worldwide. The album’s third single, “Maps”, received significant airplay on alternative radio. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked “Maps” as 386th in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The video for their 2004 single “Y Control” was directed by Spike Jonze. In October 2004, the band released their first DVD, Tell Me What Rockers to

Swallow. The DVD included a concert filmed at The Fillmore in San Francisco, all of the band’s music videos to date, and various interviews. Their second album, Show Your Bones, was released on 27–28 March 2006.

Karen O told online zine Drowned in Sound, “Show Your Bones is what happens when you put your finger in a light socket,” crediting “9 year old antigenius wonderkid Drake Barrett for the insight.” The first single from the album, “Gold Lion”, was released on 20 March 2006, reaching number 18 in the Official UK Singles Chart.

It has been noted by Leah Greenblatt that “Gold Lion” sounds startlingly similar to “No New Tale To Tell” from 1980s alternative band Love and Rockets.

The band toured throughout Europe and the United

“The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are frontrunners of the New York rock revival that erupted at the turn of the millennium.”

States during much of 2006, and also helped to curate an edition of the British All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.

In December 2006, the album was named the second best album of the year by NME magazine, as well as “Cheated Hearts” being voted the 10th best song. Rolling Stone magazine named it the 44th best album of 2006, while Spin magazine ranked it number 31 on their 40 best albums of 2006.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ third EP, titled Is Is, was released on 24 July 2007. It includes 5 previously unreleased songs and a short film, which was recorded and filmed at the GlassLands Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. The songs were written in 2004, during the Fever To Tell tour, and performed live often. Three of the five tracks were featured on the “Tell Me What Rockers to Swallow” DVD. Karen O and Nick Zinner performing at the Glastonbury Festival 2009 The next album by the band was released in March 2009 and is titled It’s Blitz!.[11] The band says the album sounds different from their previous ones but “still [sounds] like Yeah Yeah Yeahs”. The album was originally set to be released 13 April, but following the leak to the Internet on 22 February the band’s label, Interscope, pulled the release date closer to reduce the impact of the online leak. The album spawned three singles: “Zero”, “Heads Will Roll” and “Skeletons”. It’s Blitz! was named as the second best of 2009 by Spin Magazine and third best of 2009 by NME along with “Zero” from the album listed as the best track of the year by both.

M

usic style: Their style has been described as “an art-rock trio who made an edgy postpunk, dancefloor-friendly racket that mixed up Blondie with Siouxsie and the Banshees.”

Alongside performing headlining tours across the world, the band has supported artists such as Björk, The White Stripes, The Strokes, Liars, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

The band became one of the first western rock acts to play in China when they headlined the Modern Sky Festival in Beijing in 2007.

Karen O and Nick Zinner both appear as guests on Tiny Masters of Today’s album Bang Bang Boom Cake. The song was written via email and features Karen singing. In addition, Karen co-directed and all three band members were featured

in the video for the group’s “Hologram World” video.

In 2009, the band appeared on a charity album War Child Presents Heroes with their version of The Ramones’ song “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker”. Zinner also contributed to the Bright Eyes’ record Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and performed with the band on tour.

Soundtrack work For the movie Jackass 2, Karen O collaborated with electronic artist Peaches and Johnny Knoxville to record a track entitled “Backass”; for Jackass 3D, she covered the Roger Alan Wade ‘s “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb” under the alternative title of “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough”.

In 2007, Karen contributed vocals to a version of Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” for the I’m Not There movie soundtrack.[19] She also appears on the soundtrack of the film t s Where The Wild Things Are, ri ta directed by former boyfriend i u rG Spike Jonze.[20] In 2007, the e n Zin song “Date With the Night” was Nick featured in episode 1.05 of Skins (TV series), and is on the official soundtrack. Their song “Runaway” was also featured on the April 20, 2009 episode of Gossip Girl and on the Australian television show “Sea Patrol”. “Sealings” appears on both Driver: Parallel Lines & Spider-Man 3 soundtracks.

The song “Phenomena” featured on the film The Ruins as the song of the ending credits. The “Little Vampire” remixed version of “Heads will Roll” features in Gran

Turismo 5 as in-game music.

In the super bowl episode of Glee, “The Sue Sylvester Shuffle”, the McKinley High School football team and the New Directions performed “Heads Will Roll” along with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for their halftime show.

In March 2010 their song “Heads will Roll” was featured on a promo for the 4th season of the Showtime series The Tudors.

On December 10, 2006, a home-recorded album titled KO at Home was leaked via an invite-only BitTorrent tracking site. The album, originally a personal gift to Dave Sitek of the NYC band TV on the Radio, was discovered inside a suitcase Sitek owned, amongst the rubble from a New York apartment fire. The disc’s 14 tracks and scan of the cover – a photograph of Karen O with a poem written by Oscar Wilde on the back – quickly spread. The music news site Stereogum broke the story of the leak[21] the following morning and continued their coverage[22] when Sitek lashed out at the fan who leaked the demos.[23] Eventually Sitek followed up his comments with an apology letter.[24] Karen O’s response to the leak was “shit happens” and although she was somewhat “grossed out,” she offered advice on which of the mp3s she liked the best,[25] namely the tracks “Pumpkin” and “Snakes and Worms”.

Nick Zinner also collaborates in a mathcore/thrashcore supergroup Head Wound City. Other members of the group are Jordan Blilie (Past Lives, The Blood Brothers), Cody Votolato (Jaguar Love, The Blood Brothers), Justin Pearson (Holy Molar, The Locust) and Gabe Serbian (The Locust, Holy Molar). Their debut self-titled EP was released in 2005.

Leave it to Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O to tell a story through visuals. The art rockers teamed with director and fellow New Yorker Barney Clay for the video for band’s new single, ‘Zero,’ off their latest album, ‘It’s Blitz!’ The concept? The world is your stage, metaphorically speaking. “The visuals had to be well paced with the slow ecstatic build of the song,” Karen O tells Spinner. “It made sense that the visuals would take you on a journey and keep you on the move -- no sitting still for too long in the city landscape of bright lights, dark alleys and glittering streets. ‘Zero’’s sentiment is to revel in being you -- you’re a zero so screw it!

It’s the underdogs, the rebels, the outsiders that have always captivated me growing up so I decided why not flaunt that side of myself in the video.”

As for Karen O’s favorite video of all time? “It’s a tie between Chris Cunningham’s ‘All is Full of Love,’ for Bjork, and ‘Thriller!’” Here, here.

Having shared bills with 2001 darlings White Stripes and the Strokes, it’s not

shocking that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs also are wrapped in a sticky film of hype.

They tackle it explicitly when indispensable singer Karen O croons, “It’s our time to be hated / So glad that we made it” (the conceit plays to a Br tune vaguely reminiscent of “Crimson ia n and Clover”). To be safe, the YYYs are Ch calling themselves sellouts before they sell as e out--but for this trio of rock & roll revivalists, Dr um sounding good enough to be popular is their only m crime. Attacking with a snottiness sorely needed er these days, they confront the critical types as (jealous) “punk kids” anyway. With a sexy yet imperfect swagger, they come on like calculating outsiders bent on forcing their way in. As an antidote to the glossy/rough New Yorkerism presented by the Strokes, the YYYs serve up dirtier yet sublime grit, in five tunes about bad sex, “art stars” and “mystery boys” who will “be your toys.”

Careening drums pop into synch with sparse, metallic punk guitar, and none of O’s “yeah”s and “baby”s are wasted or otherwise lost in the band’s econo-power style: surprisingly loud, though bassless, and carved with abandon from ‘60s garage, the playfulness of X-Ray Spex, the sparseness of the Delta 5, and the shambolic thrash of the Fall.

DEPARTMENT 2