Mick Jagger defies years as he hits pension age

• Iriver's unsinkable MP3 player
• The Cure brings darkness, light to NY concerts
• Punk fans brave heat for launch of Warped Tour
• Lil Wayne crushes the competition on album chart

Interpol

New York's Interpol reminds anyone who has ever heard post-punk bands like Joy Division and the Chameleons of those exact bands, plus a few more. The roots of the band -- as far as its members are considered -- can be traced back to a partnership between Daniel Kessler (a guitarist and vocalist) and a fellow New York University student named...

Beastie Boys

As the first white rap group of any importance, the Beastie Boys received the scorn of critics and strident hip-hop musicians, who accused them of cultural pirating, especially since they began as a hardcore punk group in 1981. But the Beasties weren't pirating -- they treated rap as part of a post-punk musical underground, where the...

Björk

Björk first came to prominence as one of the lead vocalists of the avant-pop Icelandic sextet the Sugarcubes, but when she launched a solo career after the group's 1992 demise, she quickly eclipsed her old band's popularity. Instead of following in the Sugarcubes' arty guitar rock pretensions, Björk immersed herself in dance and club culture,...

Arcade Fire

Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Richard Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and Win's kid brother William Butler formed the Arcade Fire in summer 2003. The experimental indie rock quintet, who hail from Montreal, initially began when the elder Butler spotted Chassagne singing jazz standards at a local art exhibit at Concordia University in their hometown. From...

Manu Chao

Manu Chao helped begin the Latin Alternative movement, way back in the '80s -- although it had no name then -- and in his later work he cuts a cross-cultural swathe across styles and geographic boundaries. Chao, whose real name is Oscar Tramor, was born on June 26, 1961 in Paris, to Spanish parents -- his father Ramon Chao a respected writer,...

M.I.A.

If you read a lot about new music on the Web, odds are pretty good that, at some point between the September 2004 release of "Galang" and the March 2005 release of Arular, you were struck with the urge to turn your computer off or maybe even heave it out of a nearby window. If you don't read a lot about new music on the Web, the preceding...

Bad Brains

By melding punk with reggae, Bad Brains became one of the definitive American hardcore punk groups of the early '80s. Although the group released only a handful of records during its peak, including the legendary cassette-only debut, Bad Brains, they developed a dedicated following, many of whom would later form their own hardcore and...

"Antics"
Interpol "To the 5 Boroughs"
Beastie Boys "Drawing Restraint 9"
Björk "Funeral"
Arcade Fire "Radio Bemba Sound System"
Manu Chao "Arular"
M.I.A. "I & I Survived (Dub)"
Bad Brains