Now, we shall direct you to our favorite live performance of the best Bikini Kill song “Strawberry Julius,” which is about “how not letting, just because like, a lot of fucked up shit like, exists, like, ruin things that aren’t fucked up.“

You know Animal Collective is PSYCHED on this cover—a lot of their music has the psychic underpinnings of the Afro-Cuban son (or maybe we’re just projecting), and “My Girls” was essentially BORN to be a salsa cover. This also may be the first time we have actually heard the real-life enunciated lyrics. How did the Williamsburg Salsa Band figure out words that we aren’t even positive Animal Collective knows? Hopefully they just made some stuff up like a Mad Lib!

The internet has their hinterlands in a heezy today over the just-released behind the scenes short of Spike Jonze pretending to smack Kanye West across the face for over-texting. What has ensued is a sideshow of Kanye-haters witnessing their most orgiastic fantasies enacted and gleefully, droolingly soaking it up—a reprise of the true colors unloosed during the Taylor Swift incident. The public vitriol towards Kanye even inspired Pitchfork to refer to it as a “bitchslapping,” which, to us, translates as either they [everyone] newly think of Kanye as belonging to the same lower caste as women, or they [everyone] think of women as belonging to the same lower caste as Kanye. Either way, society, women, Kanye, progressiveness, victims of domestic violence, Rihanna, people who die in barfights, and your mother all lose—as does humor, because to be honest, this shit ain’t that funny. WELCOME TO BUMMER SUMMER! GUY DEBORD AND LUCIFER TAKE ALL!

Yesterday the website for the all-female 2010 Lilith Fair tour launched, and the late ’90s came flooding back. They’re offering a free Sarah McLachlan MP3 but it has little in the way of information, however, with only tour stops—not even dates—and absolutely nothing in the form of a roster. So, in lieu of knowing who will actually tour, we thought we’d make a little Fantasy League of the Main Stage acts, featuring some of the artists that are sure to be on the roster and some that we really really wish were. Feel free to do the same in the comments with your real email address, and whoever comes closest wins a Sarah McLachlan CD and a bag of lavender scented bath salts.

TRIPWIRE’S FANTASY LILITH FAIR LEAGUE

SHOO-INS (PAST-YEAR VETERANS AND/OR like, DUHS):
Sarah McLachlan
Tegan & Sarah
Every female act on Nettwerk
The Indigo Girls
Meshell Ndegeocello
Annie Lennox
P!nk
kd lang
Santigold

LIKELY
Peaches
Feist
St Vincent
Christina Milian
The Slits
Evanescence
Chrisette Michele

IF THEY CAN AFFORD IT
Kelly Clarkson
Taylor Swift
Mary J Blige

WHO WE HOPE WILL BE ON IT IF WE CAN GET FREE TICKETS
Nicki Minaj
Bat for Lashes

Okay, there’s a stab. MAKE YOURS! MAKE IT REAL! FOCUS ON THE RELAXING BATH IN YOUR FUTURE!

Since Chuck Klosterman evolved from a nerdy humorist from the Dakotas to a nationally worshipped figurehead for a very specific breed of blowhardy American male, conditions have become increasingly worse for the animals. And ever since Craig Finn’s The Hold Steady went from a beer-chugging Minnesotan bar band to a Moet-guzzling ensemble of arena-ready performers, a small child’s hamster has died once an hour. Perhaps the only way to stop the poaching of zebras was for Craig Finn and his old pal Tom Ruprecht, writer on David Letterman (whole ‘nother post), to band together to turn Klustramoun’s seminal first book, “Great American Presidents,” into a watchable film starring Natalie Portman, known friend to the animals. Because so little of today’s popular entertainment and culture caters to white males, they are doing us all a service, looking out for the little people. When this film is made the oppressed bepenistacled across America will finally have something that they can relate to. And then, if this plan that Kloosterhein and Finn and Ruprecht have hatched doesn’t actually save the Albanian tree frog from getting iced to extinction by frothy chefs, it will not matter, because an entire breed of person will have been saved. (via P4k)

Everything you thought you knew about “Gossip Girl”’s Penn Badgley being a hugely Hollywood, affected d-baggington is
apparently not true, according to this late-breaking expose with the New York Times. In a recent installment of their “A Night Out With” section, investigative reporter Dave Itzkoff learns that Badgley is not only a somewhat average fellow like any other 22-year-old East Villager—shopping at Other Music, drinking Bud at Mars Bar—he likes decent music! He bought records by RZA and Toumani Diabete! Has he been reading The FADER? At first this news was shocking, but then we thought, perhaps Penn is simply typecast as Dan, because… remember his last emotive coolguy television character, Owen Gregory? No? That was on the Bedford Diaries, the shortlived WB drama about NYC college students, and Penn was sporting some seriously amazing grunge hair during that time. (YouTube evidence after the jump.) And while 21st century grungers don’t generally get along with punks as a matter of principle, as Penn states in the piece, you just have to not be a jerk. We’ll be watching Gossip Girl with a whole new open mind, wondering what other musical gems Badge-O’s got in the crates.

Even in our most inebriated and/or masochistic mind-spirals, we’ve never attempted to make a mash-up of Emmy Rossum’s lilting Imogen Heap-esque “Slow Me Down” and Counting Crows’ classic dad-jam “Mr. Jones.” Even though it might sound good. Some things should remain sacred. Yet Emmy Rossum, the person, and Adam Duritz, the only man in rock with a dread weave, may in fact be working on their own little mash-up—one that includes actual humans. The recently divorced actor/singer told People that she can “understand” why “chicks dig Adam Duritz” and cites his kindness, creativity and intelligence as reasons why said chicks would be into dude, alluding to the fact that maaaaybe it is she who is into him. The obvious mention would be like, “EW, she is 23, he is 45, and dating him would be like going for Steven Spielberg’s hippie younger brother, mega Phish fan vibes, plus running yr fingers through a DUDE’s weave is just like, not that appealing.” But we’d also like to point out that Emmy Rossum went on tour with Counting Crows and Burning Spear over the summer and therefore is kind of like dating a second-year NYU student with a Nag Champa habit and a closet full of climbing gear. So, as fans of love, we are gonna have to go ahead and briefly co-sign this one, and hope we never have to think about it again. Ever. EVER EVER EVER.

Hey Upper East Siders… Tripwire here. Your source for the juiciest indie rock gossip on the internet. Earlier today sources confirmed that Sonic Youth would debut a brand new acoustic version of EVOL’s 1986 track “Starpower”—a track bubble-gummy as the Ciccone Youth get—on our favorite Monday night party jam, Gossip Girl. COINCIDENTALLY this item leaked mere days after the news that Gossip Girl is writing a big ass naked menage a trois into the script, which will hopefully be scored by Kim’s lethargic singing—because for bourgeois New York teens, menage a trois are about as fascinating as breathing, and just as common. Then again, since Sonic Youth are well into their 40s and the only people who might be pumped at having something so sexually adventurous and vanilla-y as a threesome are the parents, we think we figured out the plot: Dan’s dad Rufus knew Sonic Youth in the ’90s when he was in that grunge band. Maybe they were on Lolla together, but Sonic Youth DEFINITELY hated his band as they were gross corpo inventions of the Candlebox variety instead of organic basement scuzzbuckets like Mudhoney. But here he redeems himself by doing it with Lily and… Vanessa? Blair’s mom? The maid? A mailorder bride? AT THE SAME TIME! STARPOWER! ZOOM!

Okay, we’re all totally over hearing our favorite songs in the background of One Tree Hill episodes, ever since Josh Schwarz dropped a big fat alterna-bomb on primetime with boob-tube A&R The O.C. and every show thereafter became a wash of minor-key power chords and plaintive wailing. But when an moderately arcane ethnomusicologist-esque DJ/producer is WRITTEN INTO THE SCRIPT of one of the cheesiest/most mainstream teen franchises since Patty Duke, we kinda have to take a moment to wonder what the hell is going on in the writer’s room over at The CW. Last night on 90210, when explaining why he and his girlfriend are made for each other, the character played by Tristan Wilds (the dude from the fourth season of The Wire) says, “WE BOTH LIKE DJ/RUPTURE.” WHATTT! Either the screenwriter was consulting Wilds as to what DJs he’s into, or the screenwriter was like “OH YEAH DUH, PRIVILEGED BEVERLY HILLS TEENS ARE TOTALLY, TOTALLY INTO GUARACHERO AND CUMBIA!” Maybe they have better taste than we thought? We’re pulling for a guest appearance next. We’ve already written the plot: So the girl he’s dating finds out that he’s still in high school (she’s an older woman) and dumps him because, ew. But then they GO to a DJ/Rupture gig (one where he’s DJing all obscure dancehall maybe), they meet him and he gives them sagely advice about how age ain’t nothin but a number, and they get back together. COME ON! Watch the show after the jump… the moment comes at about 12:40 in a beach scene.

Hater Mondays: September will see the release of The Indie Rock Coloring Book, a compendium of illustrations by Andy J. Miller based on the oeuvre and aura of his favorite indie rock bands, including a “fill in Rilo Kiley’s hair” page and a “psychedelic” MGMT “playground”. We cannot front too hard because any proceeds the book collects will go to the Yellow Bird Project, which works with indie rockers to raise money for various charities. But the arrival of this illustrated tome forced us to delve into the psyche of such conceits—whose clear geneses reside in twee—which cherish an infantilized notion of “childlike splendor” and abhors the concept of “acting appropriately according to one’s birth year in relation to the present.” True, perhaps there are some extremely advanced children of coloring book age who will enjoy recreating the movie projector on The New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema album cover in crayon. More likely, we envision a gaggle of 24-year-old boy-men in rust-colored turtleneck sweaters using Utrecht-purchased colored pencil packs to fill in a Broken Social Scene maze (possibly while listening to ancient Beat Happening records). Caveat Emptor, amigos! Carpe Diem! This is not the new primitivism! Benjamin Button was a work of fiction! LIVE YOUR LIVES!

Billboard gives out awards for things like “Woman of the Year” and this time around the honor goes to none other than Beyonce Knowles. Because she pwns everyone on earth when it comes to dropping hits, warbling lines, giving face, wearing clothes, shaking booty, following choreography, dancing in heels, smiling coyly, being wonder-womany, getting crazy French designers to come out of retirement solely for the purpose of outfitting her bodacious bod, and making tracks like “Single Ladies” that inspire five year olds everywhere to do the “put a ring on it” dance while riding their little razor scooters (this actually happened). Because she is Sasha Fierce. Because she sang at the frigging inauguration ball. The party line, via Billboard: “Beyoncé is a multi-platinum artist and a multi-talented woman who clearly embodies the qualities of excellence and achievement that the Billboard Woman Of The Year Award was created to honor,” said Bill Werde, Billboard’s Editorial Director, about Beyoncé, who is the only performer in the 51-year history of the Billboard Hot 100 to top the chart for 10 weeks or more with a group and as a solo artist. “She has not only influenced pop culture with her hit songs and signature dance moves, but has inspired women everywhere with her unique style, business savvy and dedication to charitable causes.” So basically, she is awesome and we all suck for not being her. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

It’s pretty amazing that, even as rock music in the formal/classic sense hasn’t been too vital for a hot minute, its historians continue to pretend women didn’t contribute (except as muses and groupies, of course). The latest infraction to the female rocker canon: Elle magazine points out that It Might Get Loud, the hot new guitar-dude documentary to hit screens, is just that: a big old honking sausage party of fellows noodling on their fretboards in united male virtuosity. That’s cool but man, can the ladies get a witness? In the spirit of it all, Elle did the 2nd most dude-festily/male-bondy activity after riffing: they made a list of the top 12 female electric guitarists (because not only can ladies shred, they can also be music nerds, go fig). We feel like there might be some people missing (does Tracy Chapman ever plug in?) but the point is the point: revisionist history is not that rocking.

Because we are certain your lives mirror the everyday travails of such unfairly put-upon elite New York teenagers Serena, Chuck, Blair, Nate and to a lesser extent commoners Dan, Jenny and (tsk) Vanessa, we knew we had to alert you to this contest celebrating the DVD release of “Gossip Girl” season two. New York Cool beseeches you to TELL YOUR STORY… write them a paragraph about “how the spirit of Blair, Serena, Jenny, Vanessa, Nate, Chuck and Dan have helped you overcome life’s little tragedies. Be specific. When you are treated with disrespect like dear Serena, do you buy a new purse or get a wax? When threatened with the loss of prestige like our glam heroine Blair, do you flee to Bora Bora or just get a spray tan at Bliss Spa?” The person with the MOST EPIC TRAGEDY overcome by the craziest display of total Upper East Side conspicuous consumption, retail therapy and/or bourgeois escapism will win a free t-shirt! But just so you know, we are going to win when we tell the story about the time we broke a nail and got through it by listening to Leighton Meester’s demos on YouTube for sixty-two days straight before we gathered up all our cousins and racked a Bergdorf’s. Sorry dudes! Enter the contest here.

Last night, Taylor Momsen (aka Gossip Girl’s “Little Jenny”) celebrated her 16th birthday at the Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan by playing a show with her band, Pretty Reckless. We admit we were skeptical at first, both because we are fearful of actor/musician crossovers in general, and because our favorite Gossip Girl side project is already Leighton Meester’s. But, truth be told, Lil Jenny blew us away with her powerful singing voice! At first we thought we might simply be impressed because we were kind of jazzed at seeing Chuck Bass and Dan’s Dad in real life (they were up front by the stage and rocking their faces off), but when we closed our eyes and pretended like she was just some schlub from Jerz, it still sounded awesome: a boozy worldwise rasp with a wicked patina of Jett, Cobain and Hynde. All her songs are about her ex-boyfriends, apparently, so don’t be a douche if you date her. We flipcammed the whole thing.

Even as the push of technology marches on, trampling everything in its wake, this video for Deerhoof’s “My Purple Past”  proves that no matter what, crappy boomboxes you put in your bathroom on top of the toilet will always outnumber more sophisticated forms of technology. They are the roaches of music playing devices. Artist Asha Schecter directed the video and made it into a sort of living version of her photographs, a real time installation piece. Boombox you will never die!