Everybody's Doing It

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been filling up their pop quota quite a bit lately, which is great because if there's two things I love in the world, they would certainly be pop music and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. For some fans of Karen O. & Co., the prominent use of synthesizer in the trio's batch of new songs from the upcoming album, It's Blitz, is some what blasphemous, much like attending a Britney Spears concert on Easter Sunday (which I totally will be doing). But honestly, there's no other way we'd rather celebrate.

Lead single "Zero" was a little underwhelming, since it sounds a bit like an out-of-place YouTube mash-up (and any Goldfrapp comparisons are just people being lazy -- there are other electro-rock dance bands out there, FYI) and takes a bit too long to get the party started (dance music requires party-starting capabilities). But the next leaked track, "Heads Will Roll" is a significant improvement. While "Zero" had weird stuttering feedback-y synthesizers, the instruments on "Heads Will Roll" comfortably exist between a Killers remix album and a Halloween garage rave. Too bad Halloween seems as far away as the YYY album release date (April 14th).

Karen O. also made an appearance on the new N.A.S.A. album, which doesn't surprise me one bit considering Squeak E. Clean, one half of N.A.S.A. and sibling of director Spike Jonez (who directed YYY's "Y Control" video) also produced the band's 2006 disc, Show Your Bones.

I'm not quite sure why N.A.S.A. hasn't been sued yet by the real National Aeronautics and Space Administration yet, but in the meantime, the new N.A.S.A. (North America South America) has just dropped, without much warning or little publicity, their debut release, the Spirit of Apollo.

The album sounds a bit like the noise made when my head explodes, because when you put CSS's Lovefoxx and bad-ass MC Amanda Blank one track, that's usually what happens. Although you can barely hear Lovefoxxx on that song, "A Volta," there are plenty of other name-dropping collaborations (Tom Waits, the Cool Kids, E-40, Method Man, and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Pepper fame, just to name a few) to let your jaw hit the floor.

"Wachadoin?" managed to cram the ever-nasty Spank Rock, new mom M.I.A., YYY guitarist Nick Zinner, and the recently legal-troubled Santigold onto one track. Before you run to the comment box to correct me on my spelling, you should know that the legal musical entity Santogold is no longer in existence, and if you need any proof, just park yourself over at her old MySpace. Somebody on Stereogum, which kept me up-to-date on the all the legal junk, said it best when he or she described the incident as "bad news for audio scrobblers." Something tells me that's the least of Ms. Santi's worries right now, though.

Anyway, the-artist-formerly-known-as-Santogold also shows up with Kanye West and Lykki Li on "Gifted," which is another boss cut of epic startstruck proportions. I'm telling you, the N.A.S.A. collective is going to infiltrate pop music. M.I.A.'s rhymes in "Paper Planes" were already sampled ad nauseum in the Kanye/Jay-Z/T.I./Lil Wayne jam "Swagga Like Us," and Santi's line from "Shove It" gets a lot of air time in Jay-Z's contribution to the Notorious Soundtrack, "Brooklyn We Go Hard." I guess it's not that special when you notice that Kanye produced both tracks, but this type of thing gets me excited. Now all we need are the Amanda Blank and Kid Sister albums to drop and we'll be good to go.