Shakespeare tragedy gets aggressive Balkan makeover...

White Denim, as their frenetic live shows would suggest, are not a band much given to idling. Last summer, while the master tapes of their scintillating third album D were withering on the reel, awaiting record company approval of a reworked song that the band never wanted on the album in the first place, the Texan crack shots decided to use their downtime productively.

It didn’t require a telescope to spot Craig Finn’s first solo record glinting on the horizon. The most recent Hold Steady album, last year’s Heaven Is Whenever, hinted at creative restlessness within the ranks. The band carved out a little more space and Finn scaled down his narratives to something less obviously cinematic, yet it seemed clear there was ample room for further exploration.

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist with The Doors, has said he believes Jim Morrison would have "loved" the band's recent collaboration with Skrillex.

Etta James has died at the age of 73.

The National's frontman Matt Berninger has spoken out about the band's inclusion on the longlist for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Fleet Foxes' drummer Joshua Tillman has announced that he is leaving the band.

Leonard Cohen has said that people have asked him for a moratorium on the usage of covers of his classic song, 'Hallelujah'.

The Cure have announced three further festival appearances for this summer.

“David Byrne, all neurasthenic nettles pointing inward. He looked like someone who’d just OD’d on Dramadine – all cold sweat clammy and nerve net exoskeleton… just looked like some nut just holidayed from the ward with a fresh pocket of Thorazine, that’s all. There was something gentle, shy, reflective and giving about his hideous old psychosocial gangrene.” That’s Lester Bangs, in full flow, recalling the first time he saw Talking Heads live, around 1976, in a rambling, sometimes flashing essay written in 1979 as a review of the Fear Of Music album, but only published for the first time now, as accompaniment to this superbly conceived DVD.