his two times platinum 2005 ACM and CMA Album of the Year, Time Well Wasted. American Saturday Night features the hit single 'Then,' produced by Frank Rogers.  (less)

"Paranoid," is a guitar driven dance evoking song, and the entire CD is a veritable smorgasbord of pop and rock gems. "World War III" is a funk metaphor for a confrontational relationship. Written by Nick Jonas, he asserts, "This is a personal experience for me. `World War III' deals with the challenge of a girl who keeps attacking you, provoking you, trying to fight you, but all the while she's the only one fighting." "Fly With Me" which is also the end title credit for the upcoming "Night At The Museum 2" film (due in theaters May 22), was written by Jonas Brothers and their bass player Greg Garbowsky, and is sure to become a love song for the ages. On "Poison Ivy" Jonas Brothers added a horn section. In their summer ...  (less)

of place on a Guitar Hero soundtrack. Of the album, frontman Brent Smith says "In the seven years of this thing called Shinedown, I’ve seen a lot of different things - what we’ve all gone through on the road, things in our personal lives or witnessed firsthand through the fans that we’ve made and the relationships we’ve built with our audience. I think the biggest thing was I didn’t want to sugarcoat the way life can be sometimes." Their face-melting rock comes as no surprise, considering that the band hails from sultry Jacksonville, Florida. Their 2003 debut album, Leave A Whisper , and sophomore follow-up, Us And Them , have been RIAA-certified platinum and gold respectively and they have had songs featured on the WWE, ESPN and in va...  (less)

a plethora of strings and huge emotional crescendos. Underwood co-wrote four songs, mostly with the tried-and-true tunesmiths who made Some Hearts soar. On the torchy heartache ballad "I Know You Won’t," she gives a beautifully nuanced and controlled performance, but if that song would suit any number of lush female pop stars from Celine Dion on down, "Flat on the Floor" rocks hard while preserving co-writer Ashley Monroe’s Appalachian angst. Still, there are missteps: the easy tears of the unlikely war ballad "Just a Dream," a too-obvious attempt to repeat the sass of "Before He Cheats" ("The More Boys I Meet"), and the Shania-ish bad-girl-on-Cuervo stomp of "Last Name." The big payoff, then, is how much 24-year old Underwood has ...  (less)

The trick here is that Irglová and Hansard also play the leads; because their characters are shown busking, writing music, or rehearsing, the songs are smoothly integrated in the film. The overall acoustic mood won't surprise fans of the Frames--some tracks ("Say It to Me," "When Your Mind's Made Up") have even popped up on the band's albums, though the arrangements are more pared-down here, befitting the scruffy, street-musician setting. Being the lesser-known entity, Irglová feels like a revelation; she sounds a bit like a folkie Björk on "If You Want Me," and her song "The Hill" is downright heartbreaking. Irglová and Hansard had already made the 2006 album The Swell Season together, so their collaboration here feels really org...  (less)

is French for "good winter" which is spelled wrong deliberately. This debut CD is centered around Justin Vernon, who is the primary force behind Bon Iver, as he moved to a remote cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin at the onset of winter, alone for three months. From this solitary time emerged a bold, uninhibited new musical focus of all his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss, and guilt that had been stockpiled over the past six years into songs. The NY Times called this record "irresistible", and it was given a "Recommended" rating by Pitchfork. 9 tracks. Jagjaguwar Records. 2008.  (less)

is due in stores everywhere June 12th. Lead single Misery Business, in addition to other album tracks, deals with issues of shame and self-discovery as lead-singer Hayley Williams discusses. I've been ashamed, she says. I've felt hate, jealously, lust, fear, pride, self-consciousness... You hear a lot of this on the record. I feel like I need to talk about it. It is not uncommon for Paramore to expose their emotions and allow fans to have such an intimate look into their lives. While recording the track Born For This, the band invited a handful of fans into the studio to sing back-up vocals on the song. Fans have responded by voting Paramore as the #1 Best New Band in Kerrang! magazine, beating out Panic! at t...  (less)

princess...next big thing" - Spin. "Santi White is Santogold...the collaborators and players may change, the sounds may shift, but at the center is one woman's indelible vision" - The Fader. SXSW / Coachella shows, 2007 tours with Bjork, M.I.A., songs featured in Entourage, Grey's Anatomy, Grand Theft Auto.  (less)

throws caution to the wind and threads her pop needle with an ambitious ribbon of yet-to-be-conquered genres: reggae and ska on "Mary Jane Shoes," with Rita Marley; vintage soul on "Here I Come"; '80s hip-hop on "Fergalicious"; and sophisticated R&B on the John Legend-assisted "Finally." It's a tremendous and unpredictable expenditure of effort that mostly pays off--echoes of more talented vocalists like Pink, Beyoncé, and Christina Aguilera poke through in places. But while unbridled messing about can pay handsome artistic dividends (here, the guitar-propelled rock-like track "Big Girls Don't Cry" coughs them up), ultimately it's when Fergie's at her Peas-iest that she's most lovable; cases in point are the raunchily irresistible "London Bridge," which ea...  (less)

also making sure he has at least one foot firmly in the past. A natural step forward, to put it simply.  (less)

five originals — the lonely-at-Christmas "Washington Square," "Hey Santa!" and "Christmas On TV," the spiritual "Brightest Star" and the maybe-next-year "Gotta Be Good." Chris Isaak Christmas is this season's holiday surprise — a Christmas album that's actually cool.  (less)