The Horrors perform an extremely capable cover of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust-era “Suffragette City” for Channel 4?s On Track… program. It’s a live, in-studio take, but it sounds amazing. From the mixing to the multi-angle camera-work, this is high-budget, high-quality stuff. This band grows by leaps and bounds with every album, and it’s latest, Skying, is definitely worth your attention.

The current single, “I Can See Through You,” came out last month and is being promoted by this bizarre, visual tilt-a-whirl of a video:

Elvis Costello revived his “Spectacular Spinning Songbook” for a brief tour this past spring. The last time Master Costello had spun the wheel on stage was during his 1986 “Spinning Songbook” tour, wherein the setlist was chosen by the random spin of the wheel with various and sundry hits to choose from the prolific songwriter’s bountiful canon. To commemorate its resurgence, Costello will release a limited edition box set featuring a “CD, DVD and 10-inch vinyl EP culled from the performer’s May 11 and 12, 2011, shows in Los Angeles,” according to Slicing Up Eyeballs. The set is due out December 6 and will be limited to 1500 copies- the super-deluxe version of which will feature a 40-page hardcover book, Costello’s diary entries from each city, a giant poster, and a postcard. All of this will be housed in a hardback case with a replica of the spinning wheel on the cover. The expertly timed stocking-stuffer for the Elvis Costello obsessive in your life.

I’ve been looking forward to this band’s debut full-length all year. This is the first video of its self-titled venture on Dead Oceans. Drenched in reverb. With lost more reverb. Staccato beats. Echoing semi-shouted vocals. It’s a gloriously noisy racket. +1.

This album has been on constant repeat for the past few weeks thanks to K. Completely infectious, stripped-down, dark synth-pop, replete with hand-claps and sex-bored vocals. “Keep You” is the opening track off the record, and the one I return to the most. This video is unofficial and features footage from 1967’s Anna starring Anna Karina. One of my favorite records of the year.

Duran Duran has released Girl Panic!, the third single from its Mark Ronson-produced and semi-comeback album All You Need Is Now. The video for Girl Panic! lifts a page from George Michael’s “Freedom” but takes the idea much deeper: A cast of well-known supermodels (Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Yasmin Le Bon, Eva Herzigova, and Helena Christensen) pose as Duran Duran while the members themselves take subsidiary parts as journalists and bell hops. It’s self-referential, kitschy, and self-deprecatingly funny. Duran Duran has always been able to express itself extremely well via video, and Girl Panic! proves that the band has retained a healthy sense of humor amidst the ups and downs of maintaining an audience post-80’s teen girl frenzy. Jonas Akerlund directs this nine-minute “short film.”

“Approximately 92% of the 174 songs that made it into the [Billboard] Top 10 in 2009 contained reproductive messages,” says SUNY Albany psychology professor Dawn R. Hobbs in Evolutionary Psychology.

In an uncharacteristic act of act of restraint, Ryan Adams has been relatively quiet on the new album front the past few years. He did put out that weird proto-metal record last year (Orion), but that somehow doesn’t count as a “Ryan Adams” album. The media is assuming the man has developed some kind of internal editor, hoping that Ashes & Fire out October 11, 2011, will be a cliched “return to form.” If you want to decide for yourself, you can stream the new album here. I’ve never been in the camp that complained about too much product output from Adams. But his new album is amazing all the same.

But, if you’re also interested in a more in depth look at what Adams’ motives are, this interview with the Guardian is extremely informative and shows Adams in his most stable frame of mind.