NICOLE ATKINS & THE SEA:  The video for "Maybe Tonight" has enough circus people for a Bob Dylan cover, but it sounds just a little bit like... ABBA?

MORE NEW RELEASES:  Gary Louris, Headlights, Mike Doughty and more are streaming via Spinner.

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set you can stream on demand via MPR.

THE KINKS:  Rolling Stone posts an essential album-by-album guide to supplement its new (offline) feature on Ray Davies.

WILCO:  Hidden Track is streaming a mix of rarities played during the band's five-night residency in Chicago.

PERE UBU guitarist Jim Jones died late Monday night. Details have not been released, but he'd been ill for years.  Obits and embedded videos at the link.

SHARON JONES &THE DAP-KINGS:  Ms. Jones may have had a roller-coaster of a year, but she and the band were sounding sweet playing "100 Days, 100 Nights" for Letterman, who exclaims, "Tremendous!"

BRITISH SEA POWER singer/guitarist Yan Scott Wilkinson talks to San Diego CityBeat about the themes on the band's third album, Do You Like Rock Music?: "We're trying to think that rock music should interact with the world outside of the music world-the real world... foreign countries or stories about geography or ecology or just funny, stupid stories. But it should kind of reach outside your own small personal sphere a little bit and make some effort to interact."  The album is off Spinner now, but you can stream a few at BSPSpace.

MOUNTAIN GOATS:  Bryant Park Project producer Ian Chillag, explains why his 7-tear-old niece Cora thinks "Dance Music" is The Best Song in the World Today.

LA BLOGOTHEQUE:  CNN profiles filmmaker Vincent Moon, whose "The Take Away Shows" capture bands performing live at ad-hoc venues, usually on or around the streets of Paris... and is now working with R.E.M.

CALVIN JOHNSON of Beat Happening and founder of K Records, is making a comeback from a traumatic brain injury.

BRITNEY SPEARS is reportedly far from happy with her conservatorship, according to OK! magazine, which claims a secret battle is raging between the pop wreck and her parents, who are trying to keep her on total lockdown in an attempt to get her life back on track.  US magazine paints a moderately better picture, though her sons have not been asking about her.  The conservatorship looks unlikely to stay in federal court.

JAMIE LYNN SPEARS, Britney's 16-year-old knocked up sister, has been grounded for reule-breaking while mama Lynne was in L.A. dealing with Britney.

GENE SIMMONS of KISS is apparently the latest celeb to have a leaked sex video turn up on the Intenet. (NSFW)

JENNIFER LOPEZ has checked into the hospital in preparation for giving birth to twins.

CHRISTINA AGUILERA may have been paid 1.5 million for exclusive baby pics, but the issue of People magazine making them the cover story flopped.  The mag was still nice enough to link to video of Ellen DeGeneres asking the all-too-obvious question of whether Xtina is nursing.

LINDSAY LOHAN:  New York magazine has NSFW outtakes from her Marilyn Monroe tribute photos.  Momager Dina thinks the photos are tasteful, but Li-Lo's ex-con dad understandably will not look at them.

THE McCARTNEYS:  Sir Paul planned to send a stinging message to Heather Mills  last night by dedicating his lifetime achievement award at the Brit Awards to his first wife Linda.  Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne threatened to kick Mills off stage if she showed up at the ceremonies.

TOM-KAT UPDATE:  The new issue of the ever-reliable Star magazine goes "Inside Suri's Strange World," where the Tom-kitten gets no discipline but a lot of Scientology.

JESSICA SIMPSON & TONO ROMO getting hitched?  "I think they're going to get married," Romo's close friend of three years, Michael Starr, says in the latest issue of Us Weekly.

THE DARK KNIGHT:  There is a spoiler inherent in this story about one of the toys to be merchandised with the Batman Begins sequel.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON & NATALIE PORTMAN meet Prince Charles at the Royal Premiere of The Other Boleyn Girl in London.  Hey, Prince, her face is up there.  More premiere pics at Egotastic.

CARTOON JIHAD:  Kurt Westergaard, one of the twelve Danish cartoonists whose Muhammad caricatures lead to violent protests throughout the Muslim world, has been booted from his police-protected hotel room on Feb. 15 for being "too much of a security risk."  Now the 73-year-old cartoonist and his wife are without a place to live.

PAKISTAN:  The Scotsman has more details on the ouster of the pro-Taleban Jamaat-e-Islami party from the North West Frontier Province in the election held this week.

OUR FRIENDS, THE SAUDIS:  The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice defended its arrest and strip-search of a businesswoman for sitting with a man in a Starbucks cafe in Riyadh.

IRAN has "speeded up" rather than halted its nuclear bomb program and has already set up a command-and-control centre near Tehran, an exiled Iranian opposition group claimed Wednesday, asking the UN nuclear watchdog to investigate.  Meanwhile, in yet another verbal attack against Israel, Pres. Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a "filthy bacteria" whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region.

IRAQ:  Gen. David Petraeus is drawing up plans to pull more troops out of the country after July on the back of a sharp drop in attacks and long-awaited progress on the political front.  US forces killed a senior al Qaeda intel officer behind female bomb attacks.  The Jurf Al Sakhr Awakening has resumed operations with the US military. The Sadrist movement denied it was withdrawing from a truce with the SIIC, but al- Sadr might announce a partial lifting of the truce, perhaps in some provinces where followers had been targeted.  Iraqi authorities plan to round up homeless and mentally ill residents to prevent them from becoming used as suicide bombers, an Interior Ministry official said Tuesday.  The train between Baghdad and Basra is getting back on track.

SWARMS OF STARLINGS as large as 500K have flown to the British Isles to escape the harsh winter weather in Russia and Scandinavia.  Tippi Hedren, call your agent.  Pics and video at the link.

...AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:  A kitty with two faces.

CAMEL-FIGHTING in Afghanistan -- the sequel to the Daily Mail's piece on horse-fighting.

SMITHFIELD is a genuine Pigcasso.