Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray, also known as rockabilly group Heavy Trash, are making a “rare return” to the west coast with tour dates from November 7 through the 18th in support of their second album, Going Way Out With Heavy Trash (Yep Roc).

German dance producer Alexander Ridha, who records as Boys Noize, creates stark, dirty, and direct tracks with hard, crisp breaks. Leslie Feist, whose breathy track “My Moon My Man” was remixed by Boys Noize into a slow-boiling dance anthem, called the producer’s work “the dirtiest clean I’ve ever heard.”

Parched, the new side project from Ephel Duath guitarist/founder Davide Tiso, have completed their debut album. The Italian prog-metal heavyweight’s new jaunt consists of a rich, atmospheric sound that tries to “capture and recreate the sound of a desert/urban desert atmosphere.”

Anomalous genre amalgamators Estradasphere have announced the forthcoming release of The Pegasus Vault EP, a collection of unreleased studio material that will accompany an assortment of leftovers from their last full-length album, Palace of Mirrors.

In this post-Strokes world of taut guitar pop, street-cool crooners, and ubiquitous use of the word “the,” it’s getting awfully hard for down and dirty rock bands to stand out.

“For us, this is the end of our first era,” says Akron/Family bassist Miles Seaton, discussing his psych-folk band’s third full-length release.

Posted today on the website of prog-fusion poster boys The Mars Volta, a biography on forthcoming full-length The Bedlam in Goliath tells an odd tale of murder, a haunted Ouija board, and band leader/composer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez nearly scrapping the album.

Guns are for Kids mean only harm. In a time when the term “post-punk” refers to any number of hipster joke bands, this group of Australian deconstructionists have created an unromantic, anti-artifice racket that is post-punk while sounding like few of their forebears.

Philadelphia’s schizophrenic, battle-paint-clad, Gypsy-tinged folk rockers Man Man have announced their signing to Anti- Records. Joining the ranks of icons such as Tom Waits and Neko Case, the band will release their follow up to 2006’s Six Demon Bag (Ace Fu) in Spring 2008.

ALARM Magazine is proud to announce itself as a sponsor of next weekend’s Riot Fest, a two-day Chicago festival headlined by punk legends Bad Brains and Naked Raygun. Organized by Riot Fest Records, the event comprises twenty-two bands, including Stiff Little Fingers, 7Seconds, The Casualties, Dillinger Four, and a reunion of Screeching Weasel predecessor Sludgeworth.