After a slew of interview vagaries, phantom EPs, Thom Yorke solo meanderings and URL conspiracy theories, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien helped clear the air a bit on the status of the band most simply refer to as world’s very best: they’re going to keep making albums. In fact, the guitarist told NME that the band will be heading into an Oxfordshire studio this winter with long-time producer (and Thom Yorke’s recent bandmate) Nigel Godrich. O’Brien even went on to joke that the album will retain a “Typical Radiohead” sound, offering English cold and cloud cover as means for sonic deviation. Or not. “We’re going into the studio in winter,” O’Brien says. “It’s always miserable! When you’re in a studio in the countryside the music you make is definitely affected by what season it is.” How about that! A depressing Radiohead album!

A week or so ago, British media whore Lily Allen got in a tiff with Radiohead, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Annie Lennox, claiming such “rich” artists don’t care about stopping digital piracy because, well, they’re rich! So what’d she do? She started a blog! She even named it It’s Not Alright, a clever play on her first album. (Note the URL: IDontWanttoChangetheWorld.Blogspot.com!) This all seemed a bit, um, trite, especially considering how Allen rose to stardom via buzz on file sharing networks, a string of digitally released mixtapes (which used choice samples from artists, presumably without clearing them) and the cult of MySpace. It’s even funnier because Allen claims only the “rich” artists don’t care about file sharing because they are already rich. Sorry Lily, but we’re pretty sure Billy Bragg is always looking out for the little guy, and you, well, you were born to a famous British comedian and a movie producer, so we’re guessing times weren’t too tough at the Allen household. Nevertheless, Allen seems to have recanted her mission, as It’s Not Alright has been deleted from the pages of Blogger. (See here). Guess you really didn’t want to change the world, did ya Lily.

Radiohead has released a new song on its website, titled “These Are My Twisted Words.” As Jonny Greenwood notes in his blog post on the track: “We’ve been recording for a while, and this was one of the first we finished. We’re pretty proud of it. There’s other stuff in various states of completion, but this is one we’ve been practicing, and which we’ll probably play at this summer’s concerts. Hope you like it.”

Download the audio here or the torrent here.

Whether or not this track will appear on Radiohead’s rumored upcoming EP remains to be seen.

The internet is a confusing place. This song clip, seeming to be a new Radiohead track, appeared unexplicably this morning on the band’s fan site At Ease. Although “These Are My Twisted Words” sounds very Yorke-ian (Ed: yikes) , the band has yet to officially confirm that the song is one of theirs. Since they’re done with recording and releasing albums, perhaps this is their new, sneaky preferred method of delivering music to the masses. (via p4k)

In an interview with The Believer, Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke indicated that the band would be unlikely to release another album conventionally, explaining that to release more music in such a manner would “kill” Radiohead. “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off,” he said. “I mean, it’s just become a real drag. It worked with [2007 album] In Rainbows because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.”

The band is currently brainstorming as to how to release new and future music, with ideas about releasing music via EPs or just online brewing. Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have also been discussing releasing a bunch of orchestral songs, also via EP. Damn.