Words like “party metal,” and “beer metal” come to mind when talking about Kvelertak, Norway’s black ‘n’ roll export, but a more accurate descriptor would be “sweat metal.” Or, if we we’re really going for accuracy, “fluid metal,” because it wasn’t just sweat that was soaking the stage and crowd at the Kvelertak show on Friday night. The band played the Studio At Webster Hall, a claustrophobic basement under Webster Hall Proper in New York’s East Village that always seems to be more packed than any fire marshal could ever allow. They were in town for a sold-out show in support of their well-received new album, Meir, and they brought the waterworks.

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The first time I ever saw Jacques Greene DJ, he spun Mya’s overlooked, Nicki Minaj-featuring slinker “Ponytail.” Throwing that out there made it clear he had been committed to pop-R&B at a young age, but is also ordained to keeping things on the dancefloor vibe sultry but still party-primed. Tom Krell, bka How To Dress Well’s work is also clearly indebted to a youthful eduction in Tevin Campbell, Whitney Houston, and the like. And while the electronic elements of his output tend toward the more experimental side, this is a union that works because it’s hinged on their shared interest in music that makes you swoon. It would be reductive to call it “Climax 2.0″ but it’s making swell my heart in the same way — with yearning falsettos, an uncertain love narrative, and luxurious electronics. Check it out below.

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Wes Eisold describes the new Cold Cave A-side as, “Cool nihilism. Existential, groovy, psychedelia.” I think the former term fits “Black Boots” pretty well, insofar as it means anything at all. The latter, though? Sorry, but “existential, groovy, psychedelia” this is not. Maybe “DeLillo-esque, urban, goth”? Or “violent, subterranean, death-rock”? Or “pale, rigid, post-punk”? I dunno, I think I’m being thrown by the word “groovy” or something. Anyway, Eisold is back with another self-released 7″, which appears to be his chosen form for new Cold Cave material at present. It’s a good look for him: Such “bleak, focused, minimalism” is perhaps better appreciated in small doses. Listen.

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The enigmatic Californian rap producer Madlib is exactly the type of person to make a new track, put it on a 7″ single, only make 300 copies of that single, and then only sell those copies to the people who show up at one specific show. His new two-track single Rock Conducta is only available at a forthcoming San Francisco show, and one of songs is “The Mad March,” which chops up a funky marching band stomp into a time-stretching ripple. Listen below.

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As far as we know, the great inward-looking indie singer-songwriter Cass McCombs has no plans to drop a new album on us anytime soon. But this summer, he will release a split 7″ with the veteran folk-music outsider Michael Hurley. McCombs’s contribution is a warm and buoyant shuffle called “Three Men Sitting On A Hollow Log,” and you can hear it below.

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Apologies for those who already know, but before “Crazy” and “Fuck You” and The Voice, Cee-Lo was one fourth of the ridiculously great Atlanta rap group Goodie Mob, whose first two albums are indisputable essential classics and whose third album is kind of sneaky-great. Last year, the group reunited on (of course) The Voice and released a somewhat perplexing new song called “Is That You God.” They’ve now announced plans for a full-on reunion album with the kinda-hilarious title Age Against The Machine, and its new single is a pretty great piece of stomping circus-funk called “Special Education.” Janelle Monáe shows up to supply a showily art-rocking hook. Listen to it below.

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You never, as a music dork, stop learning this lesson, but the truth behind it stands: It’s always, always a bad idea to dismiss an artist based on a terrible name. That rule is right up there with “horrendous rappers get better all the time, so stop believing it can’t happen,” and we break the rule just as often as that one. Case in point: Majical Cloudz. And, I mean, holy gods what an awful name. It’s name that conjures Trapper Keeper designs and rap-metal fake-toughness (that Z!) at the same damn time, and it makes the group seem, immediately, like a halfassed joke, like the sort of band whose music videos consist entirely of floating psychedelic CGI landscapes. And it didn’t help that, up until now, the only things that most of us knew about them were that they were from Montreal and that they were friends with Grimes; Grimes is turning into a pure force of cultural badassery, but she can still align herself with some wack shit. At SXSW, I didn’t just skip multiple chances to see Majical Cloudz live; I actually made the “pssh” noise out loud when presented with the opportunity. This was stupid. This was a mistake on par with high-school me hating on Daft Punk because they had “punk” in their name but weren’t actually punk. As their new album Impersonator makes crystal-clear; Majical Cloudz don’t just make good music; they make the sort of good music that creeps its way into your soul and stays there. They are not a thing to be dismissed.

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If you’re heading to The Gorge for Sasquatch! this weekend, you probably already know to check out Sigur Rós, Vampire Weekend, Tame Impala, and other live favorites. But, as with Coachella, there are some hidden gems of the festival that you need to check out. Some are groups on the verge of breaking through, some are already great bands that just got a bum set time, and others are already popular artists who are going to have some special things in this setting that you may not have realized. So click here to start our list of the 10 less obvious must-see sets for Sasquatch ’13, and look for more coverage this weekend.

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From a distance, the title track from Deafheaven’s sophomore LP, Sunbather, sounds like a particularly harrowing and intense display of might. But in the lovingly crafted details, the song is all about dynamics: George Clarke’s raw shriek is pure urgency and desperation; percussionist Daniel Tracy’s rhythms vary from hailstorm to sunshower as the movements progress and demand; and Kerry McCoy’s guitars ring out from a din of reverb and noise, bringing melody and muscle, guiding the song through clouds to Olympian heights, and then dipping gracefully, suddenly, into shadows. The final quarter of the 10-minute-plus “Sunbather” is a study in contrast and momentum: A dizzying post-black metal barrage relents, and suddenly the guitars and bass are gentle ripples in an otherwise placid dream-pop pool; then, everything ascends at once, and all the elements combine to reach higher peaks still — climax upon climax, until it is hushed.

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The Vancouver duo Lightning Dust is a side project of the great Black Mountain, and their new single “Diamond” is the romantic soft-focus new-wave jam that nobody ever expected them to write. With the song’s video, director Helen Reed tells a nice story about using art to overcome mundanity. It shows us three women who bust into a seemingly spur-of-the-moment synchronized swimming routine in a dingy public pool. Watch it below.

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I used to work in an office with a guy who played drums for the band Asobi Seksu. When he told me the name of his band, I found the moniker to be strange, inviting, and enchanting … till he informed me it was a Japanese translation of the English-language term “sport fucking” (which the band had lifted from Fight Club). Ann Arbor quartet Pity Sex have chosen a handle that is no less dubious in origin than Asobi Seksu, and it’s made doubly so by the fact that the band doesn’t even bother to glamour-cloak it in non-English. Oddly, though, Pity Sex and Asobi Seksu have more in common than just their dispiriting monikers: Both bands are quartets that play blissful and gigantic-sounding shoegaze pop with alternating female-male vocals and overdriven guitars. Pity Sex — drummer Sean St. Charles, guitarist/vocalist Brennan Greaves, bassist Brandan Pierce, and guitarist/vocalist Britty Drake — emerged in 2012 with the six-song Dark World EP (which you can check out on the band’s Bandcamp), and they’re now set to release their first full-length, Feast Of Love. We’ve got the Greaves-fronted album-opener “Wind-Up” for you to spin today, and if it means anything, it’s one of my favorite songs of 2013 — all feedback and fat, fuzzy guitars, glorious melancholy and insane pop hooks. I honestly love it. Listen.

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For certain segments of the population, including some of us who may be reluctant to admit such things, an adorable Zooey Deschanel dance routine is pretty much audio-visual crack cocaine. And that group of people (which, let’s be honest, probably encompasses Stereogum’s entire readership, as well as its staff) should enjoy the living hell out of She & Him’s new video for “I Could’ve Been Your Girl.” Deschanel herself directed this one, in which she tries and fails to get the attention of her bandmate M. Ward. This probably makes band practice awkward. Watch it below.

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Today, Sally Shapiro released Elsewhere, a remix album of her most recent full-length Somewhere Else. Among refits from Young Galaxy, Little Boots, and Nite Jewel is this Dan Lissvik’s flip of Shapiro’s “If It Doesn’t Rain.” Both versions are darkly emphatic, but Lissvik takes it late night, seedy Miami. Check it out below.

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In the video for “Iodine,” the latest single from Copenhagen electro-poppers When Saints Go Machine, a mysterious radiation-suited figure drives an old-school ragtop out to the middle of the desert, descends into a bottomless pit, and explores the crystalline cave he finds down there. You know, normal Sunday-afternoon stuff. Kristian Nordentoft and William Reynish direct the slow but absorbing clip; watch it below.

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The-Dream’s new album IV Play is now a week away from release, and on its latest single, the slippery but heartfelt “Where Have You Been,” he teams up with the former Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland. Both singers showed up on The Tonight Show last night to perform the song and to show surprising levels of onstage chemistry. Watch the performance below.

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With the 50 And Counting tour, the Rolling Stones are back on the road rocking arenas. Prior stops featured special guests Dave Grohl, Tom Waits, Katy Perry, Keith Urban, and Gwen Stefani, but on this particular night the Stones (including former guitarist Mick Taylor) shined all by themselves. Check out the photos in the gallery above and the setlist below.

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BTW alumni TEEN’s Kickstarter-funded EP Carolina is out next week, but you can stream it with us first. The sisters have crafted five tracks of complex psych-influenced but wholly unique indie pop that was produced by Daniel Schlett, who was also responsible for DIIV’s Oshin. I would tell you “Circus” is a stand-out, but I’d also tell you “Cannibal” is a stand-out and so on. Each track has exists in its own hyper-detailed, hypnotic space. Check it out below.

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In Portland punks the Thermals’ video for “The Sunset,” the second single from their new album Desperate Ground, badass bassist Kathy Foster gets a star turn. She plays a boxer training for a big fight with, as far as I can tell, the camera operator, and she also gives us her version of Rosie Perez’s dance from the Do The Right Thing opening credits. The band co-directed the video with Jeffrey Rowles, and you can watch it below.

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We’ve been waiting a while to hear a new album from the sex-obsessed, hitmaking R&B weirdo The-Dream, and that album, IV Play, is finally here. We’ve already heard the early singles “Slow It Down” and “IV Play,” as well as the Jay-Z collab “High Art,” and the album also has appearances from Beyoncé, 2 Chainz, Kelly Rowland, Pusha T, and others. But the real reason to dive into this one is that it promises to once again return us to Terius Nash’s sticky inner universe. Stream the whole album with the YouTube playlist below.

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Austra and Ital are both feel-good stories about the nice things that can happen when punks pick up computers. Austra’s frontwoman Katie Stelmanis was a shining light of Toronto’s art-punk scene for years before she put together her icy electro-goth group, and Daniel Martin-McCormick spent time in the great percussive skree bands Black Eyes and Mi Ami before he began making stripped-back, conceptual dance music as Ital. And now Ital has put together an itchy, skeletal eight-minute remix of “Home,” the throbbing first single from Austra’s new album Olympia. Below, listen to that remix, as well as another from Detroit techno legend Kevin Saunderson, and check out Austra’s upcoming tour dates.

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The members of the National are gracefully-aging Midwestern-transplanted New Yorkers who wear suits a lot, and the same is also true of David Letterman. They’re a natural fit for one another. Today, the National release their grand and confident new album Trouble Will Find Me. And last night, they came through Letterman’s show, playing a dense and inward version of “Don’t Swallow The Cap” with a full complement of string and horn players, as well as Doveman’s Thomas Bartlett on keyboard. (Dave: “A lot going on there.”) Watch it below.

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We can argue about the musical and cultural value of the Doors, but it would be straight-up inaccurate to classify them as anything less than one of America’s truly legendary rock groups. And I think it’s fair to say, too, that Ray Manzarek was as essential to the Doors’ success as Jim Morrison, maybe more so. Manzarek more or less discovered Morrison, and encouraged him to sing, and Manzarek’s keyboard was absolutely as central to the Doors’ sound as Morrison’s vocals (the Doors never employed a bass player, because Manzarek played those parts on his Fender Rhodes piano). When you’re thinking of a Doors song — any Doors song — I’d be willing to bet you’re just as likely to call to mind the keyboard part as you are the vocal. Of course Morrison died in 1971, at age 27. Manzarek continued to make music in the decades following his bandmate’s passing, most recently releasing a solo album, Translucent Blues, in 2011. Today, Manzarek passed away in a hospital in Germany, of complications related to bile duct cancer. He was 74. RIP.

Following up his 2011 EP Gabriel, Joe Goddard of Hot Chip is slated to put out a follow-up called Taking Over some time this year. Its first offering is “She Burns” featuring English singer Mara Carlyle. Their union is an interesting one, as Carlyle is famous for her use of ukelele and a musical saw, but on top of Goddard’s disparate, laser-laden lounge licks, she sounds like the main performer at a cabaret on Mars. Get into the groove below.

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Last June, we published a feature called the Top 20 Albums We’ve Been Waiting For Forever, counting down a bunch of our favorite artists from whom a new full-length was: (A) long overdue; and (B) not totally unrealistic. Coming in at No. 19 on that list was Queens Of The Stone Age. As we wrote in that space:

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The London production duo Mount Kimbie came up making evocative post-dubstep dance music around the same time as James Blake, and there seems to be a pretty good chance that their long-awaited new album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, their first for a bigger label, could push them into Blake’s cultural circles. Whether or not that happens, it’s a pretty great showcase for their foggy, atmospheric blips and bloops. We’ve posted “Made To Stray,” “Blood And Form,” and the King Krule collab “You Took Your Time,” and now you can stream the whole album at NPR.

Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is out 5/28 on Warp.