Bonnaroo Lineup Announced Throughout Today

Not too long after Coachella and the Pitchfork Music Festival revealed parts of their official 2010 lineups, Manchester, Tennessee's four-day Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival is doing the same.

Announced throughout the day (one act every six minutes) via the festival's Myspace, this year's lineup (as of now) includes several large acts including Jay-Z, Phoenix and The Flaming Lips performing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Several other acts include Weezer, Wale, The Avett Brothers, Regina Spektor, Norah Jones, Gwar (hopefully following Jones), and many, many more.

Tickets for the June 10-13 festival are available now. Expect more updates and bigger names in the near future.

Tuesday Bears: MGMT Set to Release Second Studio Album, Congratulations

Nearly two and half years after the initial release of 2007's Oracular Spectacular, MGMT (courtesy of Columbia Records and Sony Music) are set to release their second studio Congratulations.

Fresh of the duo's first Grammy nomination (losing Best New Artist to the Zac Brown Band), the band is likely to take part in (yet again) another string of summer festivals, after already confirming dates for the Coachella and Bamboozle music festivals.

Full Track List:

1. "It's Working"
2. "Song for Dan Treacy"
3. "Someone's Missing"
4. "Flash Delirium"
5. "I Found a Whistle"
6. "Siberian Brakes"
7. "Brian Eno"
8. "Lady Dada's Nightmare"
9. "Congradutions"

Congratulations is scheduled for release April 13 in the U.S, but you can preorder the album next week. Head on over to Spin for more details.

Pavement, Modest Mouse Headline Pitchfork Music Festival

Pitchfork Media's 2010 music festival announced a portion of their official line up Friday, with recently reunited indie juggernauts Pavement and Modest Mouse headlining the Chicago, Illinois three-day festival.

LCD Soundsystem, Raekwon, St. Vincent, and many others including a long list of artists yet to be announced are performing July 16-18 at Chicago's Union Park. Good for them. What this means to me and anyone who ever reads Bears and Bullets knows that whatever happens at Pitchfork Music Festival will effect Lollapalooza, also held in Chicago in early August. Because of rules and regulations, any artist performing at one festival cannot perform at the other during the same calendar year. So for any devout Lolla-goers, scratch Modest Mouse, Pavement and LCD Soundsystem off your hopeful lists. Sigh.

Official 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival Lineup (as of Feb. 8):

Monday, July 16;

• Modest Mouse

Saturday, July 17;

• LCD Soundsystem
• Raekwon

Sunday, July 18;

• Pavement
• St. Vincent
• Lightning Bolt
• Cass McCombs
• Sleigh Bells
• Here We Go Magic

Stay tuned for more updates ...

Monday Bears: New Spoon Video - Written in Reverse

Director Danny Clinch recently shot a live black and white noir video for Spoon's new single "Written in Reverse," from the band's recently released Transference LP. Britt Daniel sounds a little more distraught here than he did on Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show finale, coming off a little more raw and forward than before.

The group is currently on the European leg of their tour, but will be hitting up the Southeastern States later this month. Local fans can catch the band with Deerhunter and Strange Boys at Radio City Music Hall in NY, March 26. Transference is out now via Merge Records.

Spoon - Written in Reverse

Thursday Bears: New Strange Boys Video - Be Brave

Austin, Texas garage blues-punk revivalists the Strange Boys debuted the eponymous single of their full-length debut album Be Brave earlier today. The fuzzy, often sepia-toned video stands out like an indie-tuned summer-time get-together (so many hyphens), with little splashes of cheap sincerity and lame and therefore not so lame video effects.

Be Brave is set for release February 2 via In the Red-Rough Trade Records.

The Strange Boys - Be Brave

My take on the Grammy's yesterday gave a little transparency to where I sit on the subject; if it's not too clear just read for yourself.

Thanks to the Newsy Community Team, you can get a little more insight on whether or not the award show is still relevant.

Tuesday Bears: 2010 Oscar Nominees

Two days after the Grammy's shamed the idea of award shows yet again, the Academy Awards released their list of nominees for the year's best in film. James Cameron's super-mega blockbuster Avatar, as expected, led the way with nine total nominations, including Best Picture among the newly expanded ten nominees.

Katheryn Bigelow's Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, with nine nominations as well, is the early-front runner for Best Picture, claiming space on many end of 2009 lists as the year's best movie. Other nominees include Quentin Tarantino's Nazi remake Inglorious Basterds, Neil Blomkamp's low-budget alien epic District 9, and Pixar's Up, the first animated feature to be nominated for the award in 18 years (Beauty and the Beast), and only the second time in history.

Best Picture Nominees:

• Avatar
• The Hurt Locker
• Precious
• Up in The Air
• Inglorious Basterds
• Up
• District 9
• An Education
• A Serious Man
• The Blind Side

The Blind Side, an unexpected box-office success, was the only real wild-card of the ten films. Despite it's high grossing numbers and career role for actress Sandra Bullock, the film is a little light on critical appeal, compared to the other nine films (70% on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to The Hurt Locker's 97%). Still, the expansion to ten nominees was brought back to get those fan-favorites a little light.

Check out the full list of Academy Award nominees here ...

The 82 annual Academy Awards will be held March 7, at 8 p.m., on ABC.

Monday Bears: A Small Grammy Reflection

Last night the 52 annual Grammy Awards saw some of the biggest names in the music industry come together to reflect and perform some of the best music of the past year. Beyonce and Taylor Swift were the night's biggest winners, with Ms. Knowles taking home six awards, a record for any female recording artist. Swift, winner of four awards, took the night's highest honor, winning coveted album of the year for her sophomore release Fearless.

It's hard. It's hard being an honest and fair music critic, although I don't have an official title to say so, and take The Grammy Awards with not only a grain of salt, but just a flat out acceptance of it. As far as award shows go (and we're talking serious awards -- no Kid's (z) Choice Awards, or MTV Movie Awards or anything like that), The Grammy's must be so low on the latter of credibility that it's a comparable joke next to the Oscars and Emmy's.

Trent Reznor explained it better last night with more profound clarity:

"The Grammy's = the old guard/old media propping up their puppets trying to convince the outside world (and each other) that they're still relevant."

Much like Rolling Stone, the Grammy's always seem to try to connect with the younger demographic but inevitably falters and hands out their honors to the "old guard." Herbie Hancock winning album of the year in 2008, covering Joni Mitchell's Blue? Allison Krauss and Robert Plant beating out Radiohead for album of year in 2009? Certainly.

It's an unfortunate psycho-analytical response towards giving who what people feel they deserve. More often than not, the awards go towards those whose careers stand taller than others, regardless of whether or not their work that year was superior. And I say that year in italics because the limit of what can actually be nominated is beyond me.

So, congratulations to Swift and Knowles for their achievements, however they come to claim them. 2011 will likely spin the same results we've seen in the past several years (a'hem, decades). Here's to predictability and static constancy.

Wednesday Bears: New Local Natives Video - Airplanes

Los Angeles oft-blogged indie band Local Natives have debuted their video for "Airplanes," a cheap little video in a abandoned wintry home formerly housed by not-so-ancient ghosts.

The band's album Gorilla Manor, currently out in the UK, will be released via Frenchkiss Records in the U.S. February 16.

Local Natives - Airplanes

Tuesday Bears: New Yeah Yeah Yeahs Video - Skeletons

Nearly a year after the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released It's Blitz!, the Brooklyn trio premiered their video for "Skeletons," a ghost-ridden black and white noir take of the album's most sullen and somber moment.

The Barney Clay directed video also features a "making of," explaining the chilly tones of "Skeletons" (courtesy of Babelgum).

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Skeletons

Making of "Skeletons"