RICHARD ASHCROFT dropped the first United Nations of Sound video, "Are You Ready?", at NME.

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG is advance streaming IRM (co-written and produced by Beck) via NPR.

SHEARWATER dropped another advance track, "Black Eyes," from The Golden Archipeligo.

NEW RELEASES UPDATED: Eels, Sppon, Editors, Dawn Landes, the Crazy Heart soundtrack and more are streaming via Spinner.

SONGS FOR HAITI: Paste is opening its download vault to anyone who donates to Haiti relief charities.

COLD WAR KIDS stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a chat and mini-set, now streaming via KCRW.

LOS CAMPESINOS! release a clip for "Romance is Boring."

PAZZ and JOP 2009 is posted at the Village Voice. Analysis at All·Idols.

YEASAYER: Chris Keating and Ira Wolf Tuton talk to The Line of Best Fit about the differences in the UK and American markets.

THE FLAMING LIPS: Wayne Coyne talks to Drowned In Sound about the Dark Side of the Moon, the Arcade Fire feud, creativity and more...

NEKO CASE talks to Under the Radar about her career in general.

FINAL FANTASY: Owen Pallett gives Drowned In Sound a track-by-track tour of Heartland.

CONAN O'BRIEN's exit from the Tonight Show is now estimated to cost the network between 32.5 million and nearly 40 million bucks.  Jay Leno says he has no hard feelings toward O'Brien, which is easy to say since he is getting exactly what he always wanted.

TIGER WOODS: What the golfer will go through in treatment.

KATE MOSS is engaged to Kills guitarist Jamie Hince.

LINDSAY LOHAN: Still cutting herself?

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS is nearing a deal to appear in the May sweeps Glee episode that's being helmed by his Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog director, Joss Whedon.

CHRIS PINE and OLIVIA MUNN are dunzo.

ROBERT PATTINSON has signed on for Friday's Hope for Haiti telethon in London, with performances by Jay-Z and Bono.

DAKOTA FANNING is happy with her first lesbian scene... in the Runaways movie.

TOBEY MAGUIRE to star in The Hobbit?

THE TOP 99 DESIRABLE WOMEN, according to AskMen, just in time for Gratuitous Thursday.

IRAN is reviewing all areas of co-operation with Britain in the wake of calls by its MPs to cut diplomatic relations, its foreign minister has said. At the same time, one of the MPs involved blamed "British policies" for the bomb attack which killed an academic nuclear physicist in Tehran last week.

AFGHANISTAN: Defense Secretary Gates cited progress in areas of southern Afghanistan as evidence that the new US strategy is making an impact. "I don't think anyone is prepared to go too far in talking about success down there," he said. "It is early yet."

RETURN of the SHIBA INU CAM: Mama's got a brand new litter.

A GOAT checks out a strip club. In true goat fashion, the club was closed.

BELUGA WHALES check out Arctic divers, try to eat their camera.

A CAT on a cat, like a furry tattoo.

CASPER the COMMUTER CAT has died after being struck by a hit-and-run driver.

BRENDAN BENSON and CORY CHISEL cover Tom Petty's "American Girl." Throw in a vintage TP take from the OGWT, and you have Twofer Tuesday.

NEW RELEASES: Surfer Blood, Vampire Weekend, OK Go, Freedy Johnson, etc. were still streaming via Spinner, last I checked...

FOUR TET is advance streaming the There Is Love In You album this week.

LAURA VEIRS stopped by Oregon Public Broadcasting for a chat and mini-set in audio and video.

SPOON: Britt Daniel talks to the NY Post, while the band's album is advance streaming via NPR and The Guardian.

SMASHING PUMPKINS is streaming a new song, "A Song for a Son."

PANDA BEAR debuted all sorts on new material in Berlin.

GIRLS' latest video is for "Morning Light."

FINAL FANTASY: After a career working in the shadows, is the world ready for Owen Pallett's divisive solo album about a farmer's fictitious world of Spectrum?

KEN STRINGFELLOW (Posies, Big Star, REM) is profiled by... the Jakarta Times? Man gets around.

BRIAN ENO talks to The Guardian (and the BBC) about gospel, Abba and the death of the record.

PRAVDA RECORDS, Pate's label, celebrates 25 years. Congrats!

CONAN O'BRIEN may yet get to take Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and (ahem) the bear with him as part of his deal to exit the Tonight Show.

TIGER WOODS is planning to return to the PGA tour in the Spring, according to RadarOnline.  Meanwhile there's more smoke behind the rehab rumor.

DEMI MOORE tweeted that she skipped the Golden Globes because she was "Feeling sick and having a bad hair day!"

KATE BOSWORTH and ALEXANDER SKARSGARD were caught canoodling in the crowded bar area of the Beverly Hilton's pool area at HBO's Golden Globes party.

JENNIFER LOPEZ has nabbed a guest spot on Glee.

JENNIFER ANISTON and GERARD BUTLER romance rumors reignite, just in time for the release of their upcoming movie The Bounty Hunter.

YEMEN: The Yemeni government said it has captured the deputy leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

IRAN has appointed a Qods Force commander as Ambassador to Iraq.  Meanwhile, US intell agencies are quietly revising their widely disputed assertion that Iran has no active program to design or build a nuclear bomb.

PUPPY cries like a baby.

A CHAMPION LABRADOR fetches a deadly copperhead snake.

A GECKO that fits on a pencil eraser.

FIVE PENGUIN CHICKS debut at the Omaha Zoo.

AN ELEPHANT CALF is born at the Melbourne Zoo.

U2: "Pride" and "MLK." Crushingly obvious. Have a dream.

EELS are streaming End Times in its entirety.

THE HEAVY played the World Cafe, and you can stream the whole gig via NPR.

BLITZEN TRAPPER stopped by WXPN for a mini-set streaming now via NPR.

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY dropped "Forget It" as an advance track... at Vanity Fair?

DION: A vintage performance of "Abraham, Martin & John."

OUR BAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE Again.

AMANDA PALMER and NEIL GAIMAN are getting hitched.

JAY REATARD: The homicide investigation story has been yanked.

OINK: A British jury on Friday cleared former Oink admin Allan Ellis of conspiracy to defraud the music industry for running one of the world's strangest music file-sharing services with some 200K members.

BASIA BULAT talks to Dose about touring and her upcoming LP.

THE BBC has admitted coverage of the launch of U2 album No Line On The Horizon last February, went too far - giving "undue prominence" to the band.

CULT of the iPod: Despite iPods and other noisy gadgets, hearing loss appears to be declining among adults.  iTunes is not beloved by consumers.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Avatar tops the chart for a fifth week -- the first movie to do so since The Sixth Sense in 1999. Its 41.3 million take did not vault the movie past the 500 million mark, but that's a sure thing this week, and it will be the fastest to pass that mark.  In nominal terms, Avatar just passed Star Wars as the No. 3 movie on the all-time domestic box office charts, and will likely end up at the top of the nominal chart. However, adjusted for inflation, Avatar is currently behind 35 other movies, almost all of which are much better.  The Book of Eli opened in the second slot with 31.6 million, which is impressive for January, though about the norm for Denzel Washington.  The Lovely Bones earned 17.1 million in its first wide weekend, ahead of what gurus were predicting.  The Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel dropped to the fourth slot with 11.5 million.  Sherlock Holmes rounds out the Top Five, as its speed of descent slowed to 41 percent, taking in another 9.8 million.  However, the Holmes total of 180 million lags the Chipmunks' 192 total.  Below the fold, The Spy Next Door opened in the sixth slot with 9.7 million.  Daybreakers tumbled 67 percent, from the fourth to the 11th spot.  Youth in Revolt dropped from 9th to 12th.

CONAN O'BRIEN was reportedly near a 30 million dollar exit deal from the Tonight Show.  The network wants a "no trash talk" clause.  O'Brien's staff, who last year uprooted from New York to Los Angeles for his show, are reportedly fuming that they've been overlooked as Conan negotiates his way out.  The network will keep ownership of the Masturbating Bear, but it's unclear who controls Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

THE GOLDEN GLOBES went to these folks.

MERYL STREEP and SANDRA BULLOCK shared a win - and a kiss - at the 15th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards.

DENNIS HOPPER, diagnosed with prostate cancer in October, has filed for divorce from his wife of 13 years.

GREEN LANTERN: "Sherlock Holmes" actor Mark Strong is in talks to play Sinestro, according to director Martin Campbell -- who dismissed rumors that "Watchmen" actor Jackie Earle Haley was in talks for the role.

YEMEN: The government confirmed that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's military commander was killed in an airstrike launched against the terror group on Jan. 15.

PAKISTAN: The leader of the Pakistani Taliban released another audiotape denying that he was killed in Thursday's airstrike along the border between North and South Waziristan.  The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country's security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one.

DWARF HAMSTER EXPLODING: Part of the Cute Things Exploding series. Terrible, Funny, and not real.

KITTEN RESCUED from a ledge by the second oldest American woman to summit Mount Everest.

PUPPY RESCUED after becoming frozen to railroad tracks.

A DISABLED MAN RESCUED from snow -- by the dog he rescued from a dumpster as a puppy. "What's that you say, Auggie? Dad's wheelchair is trapped in the snow?" "Woof, woof!"

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with THE MC5! "Kick Out the Jams" is a Cary Loren and Leni Sinclair movie.  Part 1 has an Intro, plus "Ramblin' Rose" and "Kick Out the Jams" (and yes, there's language). Part 2 includes "Black to Comm," "I Want You Right Now," and "Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)." Part 3 includes and "Instrumental Jam" and "Come Together." Part 4 includes "Starship." Part 5 includes "Motor City Is Burning," "Shakin' Street," and "Looking At You."

DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE did three free songs for Daytrotter.

THE ROSEBUDS also did three free songs for Daytrotter.

ALEC OUNSWORTH stopped by WXPN for a mini-set streaming now via NPR.

THE DUM DUM GIRLS drop "Jail La La" as an advance track to their album, due in March.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND bassist Chris Baio gives Drowned in Sound a track-by-track tour of the Contra album.  The also brought strings and horns to Morning Becomes Eclectic.  Chances are pretty good that they will be atop the Billboard chart next week.

THE REPLACEMENTS: Captain's Dead posts a gig from April 5, 1985 in DeKalb.

JAY REATARD, a/k/a Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., is dead at 29. Initial reports were that he died in his sleep, though Memphis police are investigating Reatard's death as a homicide.  Beck, The Pixies, and No Age are among those paying tribute. ("Waiting For Something: A Short Documentary About Jay Reatard" is posted at that last link, too.) Spinner re-linked his session at the Interface. His website posted his final recording, a cover of Nirvana's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle."

T-BONE BURNETT talks to Fresh Air about the film Crazy Heart and about his storied career.

WILL JOHNSON, of Centro-matic, South San Gabriel, Monsters of Folk, and more, does a Q & A with MAGNET, and guest-edits their blog, with pieces on AA Bondy,1900, the Dexateens, and more.

THE PLASTIC ONO BAND, sporting an all-star line-up, returns for a one-night only performance in Brooklyn, NY.

PASTE: How the indie mag got out of the red, and into the black.

THE TEN WORST ALBUM COVERS of 2009, courtesy of Prefix.

CUTOUT BIN: From Belle and Sebastian to Johnny Cash, from Big Mama Thornton to The Clash, from the Three Degrees to the Libertines, From Lucky Soul to the Plimsouls, plus Jimi Hendrix, the Hold Steady, the Lemonheads and more -- this weekend's fortuitous finds are streaming from the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases are The Spy Next Door, currently scoring 00 percent on the ol' Tomatometer, and The Book of Eli, which is scoring 45 percent.  Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones expands wide, scoring 35 percent.

CONAN O'BRIEN and JAY LENO turn on each other, and Jimmy Fallon finally weighs in on the late night wars.  Ratings for the Tonight Show have risen in the wake of the controversy, natch. There is no deal to move Leno back to 11:35... yet. But the Daily Beast claims that Conan O'Brien is leaving, receiving a payout -- and he'll be free to appear on another network before his contract expires.

LINDSAY LOHAN braces for the release of an Internet sex tape?

BILLY CORGAN recording music with his girlfriend, the pop singer Jessica Simpson. "If you find these words hard to comprehend, it is because it is difficult to read sentences over the deafening screams of 10000 defeated Smashing Pumpkins fans."

KATY PERRY'S rep denies pregnancy rumors.

RUE McCLANAHAN suffered a stroke, but is doing "amazingly well" at rehabbing.

AVATAR: Entertainment Weekly already has sequel news.

WES ANDERSON accepted his special achievement award for Fantastic Mr. Fox from the National Board of Review in character - via a stop-motion animated vignette.

IRAN: Three men, including an Iranian-born chemical engineer living in Glendale, have been charged in a scheme to smuggle sophisticated industrial components into Iran that could be used in the development of a nuclear weapon.

THE WORLD'S MOST FEARLESS ANIMAL: The badger. And yes, there is a snake cameo.

DILLIE THE DEER really is one of the family. She knows how to turn lights on and off, gets ice from the fridge dispenser,  uses the swimming pool...  and shares her owners' bed at night.

A HORRIFIED TWITTER USER tweeted the moment a tourist was killed in the jaws of a "gigantic shark" in a holiday hotspot. Indeed, "You're gonna need a bigger boat" is less than 140 characters.

BOO, THE NINJA DOG, has been spotted strolling the grounds of Kiyomizudera temple or scampering across the premises of Nijo Castle, both major tourist attractions in Kyoto.

70 CUTE BABY ANIMALS: An awww...some photo-gallery.

LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION covered "Devil in Disguise" for the King's 75th b-day last week.

RUBY SUNS dropped "Cranberry" for a P-fork premiere.

LISSIE did the four free songs thing for Daytrotter, one previously unreleased.

HORSE FEATHERS stopped by LaundroMatinee for a mini-set in audio and video.

DICK DALE, king of the surf guitar, stopped by KEXP for a mini-set, including "Miserlou" and "Amazing Grace."

LOVE: "Your Mind and We Belong Together." Rare promo.

THE XX list a few of their favorite things for Pitchfork's Guest List.

BOWERBIRDS talk to the Capital Times about inspirations from nature. (Thx, LHB.)

eMUSIC adds the Warner Music Group family of labels to its offerings in the US.

OZZY OSBOURNE: Choice quotes and a disclaimer from his autobiography.

TEDDY PENDERGRASS died in suburban Philadelphia at age 59.

CONAN O'BRIEN ripped NBC in Tuesday night's monologue. His statement about the sanctity of running the "Tonight Show" at 11:35 Eastern was likely calculated to boost his argument that the time slot was implied in his contract, which does not guarantee his start time.  Jay Leno's contract specifically guarantees his 10 p.m. slot, so the network must negotiate a new deal with him -- and he's already doing PR to make that deal costly.

BRADGELINA donated a million bucks to Doctors Without Borders for the organization's emergency medical operations in Haiti.

TIGER WOODS: New rumors that he is in rehab.

CHARLIE SHEEN moves out, so his wife can move back in. Pesky restraining order!

MICHAEL C. HALL, star of Dexter, said in a statement Wednesday that he is being successfully treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE and JESSICA BIEL finally dunzo?  Just as Biel reaches the top of Mt. Kilamanjaro?

HEIDI MONTAG had a staggering 10 plastic-surgery procedures in one day.

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT is mad at her boyfriend for calling he "pear a**"? Shocka!

SPIDER-MAN REBOOT RUMORS kick off with Robert Pattinson as a candidate to replace Tobey Maguire.  Marc Webb, the (500) Days Of Summer director, has also attracted Sony's interest.

HOLLYWOOD'S TOP EARNING COUPLES, according to Forbes.

MEGAN FOX wears very little Armani in new underwear ads, just in time for Gratuitous Thursday.

YEMEN: The leader of an al Qaeda cell in Yemen has been killed in clashes with security forces, the Yemeni government said Wednesday.

GRAY GRAY Loves Ice Cream.

40 "COLD STUNNED" SEA TORTOISES wash ashore on beaches near Corpus Christi, TX.

PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL will text his weather prediction this year.

A SHEEP gave birth to a dead lamb with a human-like face in Turkey: "The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man."  Hey, it's in Pravda, so it must be true.