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.

Bears and Bullets Top 25 Songs of 2009 (Pt. III)

We'll continue our top 25 countdown with songs #15 through #11.

#15: Lust for Life - Girls

"Lust for Life," opened Girls debut Album with a long stretch of wishes and desires, asking for really the most simple things, but end up getting less than nothing. That "brand new start" lead singer Christopher Owens sings about comes at the back end of everything, after he realizes that those wishes, realistic or not, aren't going to happen. Despite the uplifting harmonies, percussion and tambourine, the song splits between sobering and gleeful, knowing that Owens never ends up getting the "boyfriend," "pizza," or "beach house." And yet the hand-clapped led second verse with the rest of the band filling in delightful 60's California harmonies makes you almost forget how much you can screw up before anything goes right.

Girls - Lust for Life - MP3

#14: Animal - Miike Snow

There's something oddly chilling about Miike Snow's "Animal." The production of each and every beat leading into and ending the four-and-a-half minute song is so precise that the rough idea of human's basic instincts and flaws and they're downfall seems almost counter-intuitive. What is heard, however, is one of the year's more catchy and accessible indie hits.

Miike Snow - Animal

#13: Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective

The first of several Animal Collective songs on this year's list, "Summertime Clothes" is a casually inviting spin into the Baltimore band's engulfing psychedelic pop. The jumpy, blippy, starry summer night single stood in the shadows of "My Girls," during Merriweather Post Pavilion's reign over 2009, but many argue that it surpasses it in excellence. While that may be here or there, "Summertime Clothes" deserves its due recognition.

Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes

#12: Zero - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The charging anthem of It's Blitz!, "Zero" ushers in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs first and best attempt to bring electro-charged pop to the Brooklyn band's garage-driven sound. When Karen O's voice rises with the "climb, climb, climb," guitarist Nick Zinner's pulsating melody enriches, pushes, and explodes, climbing higher and higher until "Zero's" breaking point. And that "Zero," despite being who they are, sound bigger than ever.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero (Live on Letterman)

#11: Swim (To Reach the End) - Surfer Blood

"Swim"'s endless Weezer-esque comparisons are becoming a tad null. Weezer, at their mid-90's peak resembled something close to what Surfer Blood were able to churn out -- the driving hooks, insatiable fuzzy riffs, pounding drums and chanting chorus -- but that 90's band is long gone. "Swim" sounds more complete, refreshing and tauntingly infectious than anything on Raditude, while keeping a keen ear of sincerity in the mix. The song doesn't belong in the 90's, or anywhere else really - it's pop in an endless form, that sounds similar and different after each listen.

Surfer Blood - Swim (To Reach the End) - MP3

Check Back Later for Tracks #10-#1

Monday Bears: You, me, and Weezer

Weezer, the iconic band of the 1990's the produced such enjoyable and endearing gems as their 1994 debut Weezer (The Blue Album) and 1996's emo-friendly Pinkerton, is scheduled to release their seventh studio album, entitled Raditude, November 3 via the band's longtime label Geffen.

The album, which features collaborative works from such artists as Lil' Wayne on the track "Can't Stop Partying," and Jermaine Dupri, who also helped write a few tracks.

For the select few who unabashedly adore the band for their frequent mentioned works in the 90's and 2000's Green Album, Raditude isn't so much a departure from the hallowed sounds that created "Buddy Holly" and "Susanne," but rather a stagnant continuation (or deprivation, if you will) of sounds more commonly heard from 2005's Make Believe and 2007's The Red Album.

Those aforementioned sounds fit more into a category that remains more "novelty" than iconic. Asking for earnestness from Harvard graduate lead-singer Rivers Cuomo is something entitling that what Cuomo is attempting is not earnest to him and his band mates. It is that little detail what may pain Weezer fans (past and present) the most - that the band who made such adoring, everlasting songs is not so much gone but completely carefree of what made their name so relevant.

Of course, fans will always be fans in one way or another. For every person who proclaims their illicit distaste for what Weezer has become in 17-year history, there will always be another, young or old, still standing for the band that filled their heads with the staggering, alluring sounds of "Say It Ain't So." Those fans will stand by, after future records with the same distinguished affection for the band that to many of us, are lost amid a pop-culture induced mid-life crisis.

Maybe the horribly titled Raditude will enlighten the sounds and senses that seem lost in that decade, but more likely the album will feature the songs that stir a minimal amount of imagination and ingenuity. With song titles like "The Girl Got Hot" and "Get Me Some," the latter seems to make more sense.

Weezer - (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To