Moby's Wait for Me Is Pleasant, Bland

Dancehall king blends familiar with futuristic with foray into cyberpunk

(NEWSER) - Reggaeton superstar Don Omar blends dancehall with Blade Runner on new album iDon, Jody Rosen writes for Slate. The Puerto Rican’s journey into “dystopian cyberfantasy” features plenty of “cybernetic mumbo-jumbo, foreboding synth chords, and techno twitches,” Rosen writes, backtracked by some more familiar big booming beats. More»

Study says music reflects our personalities

(NEWSER) - Our favorite music speaks volumes about who we are, according to a new psychological study. It turns out that Indie fans are miserable, and metal heads act a lot like classical music lovers. The Independent breaks down personalities by genre:

• Indie: Low self-esteem and lazy, not to mention selfish and unkind.

• Rock: Hard-working and creative, but also unfriendly and hardly generous.

Magazine gives 2.5 stars to an album it never heard

(NEWSER) - Pick a number, any number: Maxim's 2.5-star rating—out of 5—for the Black Crowes' latest album was little more than a guess, the magazine admitted yesterday. No advanced copies were released, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, but that didn't stop Maxim's critic from decreeing in the March issue that Warpaint "hasn't left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth." More»

This year has been a bummer, but the music's good

(NEWSER) - As the first half of 2010 draws to a close, James Montgomery lists his 10 favorite albums of the year—so far—for MTV :

• Kate Nash: “My Best Friend Is You represents Kate Nash at her most scattershot, squeaky and downright smart,” he writes. She’s made “an album that's rough, sprawling and unafraid to get plain weird.”
• Yeasayer: Odd Blood is “perhaps the most fittingly titled album in recent memory, a wavy, dreamy listen, full of supple, electronic fields that undulate and dip, creating precipitous peaks and delving canyons. Pop music for the 22nd century and beyond.”

Finally, kids music that's actually good

(NEWSER) - Good news, hipsters: You won’t have to trade in your street cred for Radio Disney when you have kids, thanks to “kindie music.” That’s independent kid music, aka stuff parents can listen to—and enjoy—even when their offspring aren’t around. Even as the music industry struggles, kindie music is booming, Time reports. More»