This Week on PasteMagazine.com: 7/7-7/11/08

image by Jessica Little

Welcome to PasteMagazine.com's new weekly round-up feature. I'm your host, Austin, and I edit and assign the content around these parts. Each week I plan to offer up an overview of the stories, blogs, photos, reviews and etceteras we've presented on the site over the last five days. Should be a good time, if I manage to stay on top of it. As of right now, this is just a baby idea that I imagine will evolve from week to week, but one thing is for certain: Expect a ton of links. Call it service journalism of sorts (service round-upism?) for all your web warriors out there. I welcome your comments below. What you liked, disliked, it's all good. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Our Band of the Week this week was Fleet Foxes. The Seattle boys have been enjoying a fairly delirious hype wave as of late, and you can add us to the pile. Many staffers around the office have cited the band's self-titled debut amongst the year's best.

Speaking of the year's finest recorded output, time is running out to vote on your favorite artist/album of the year so far. Vote now before it's too late.

Several new reviews hit the site this week, including new music from Beck, Ratatat, Patti Smith and Kevin Shields, Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson, Ron Sexsmith and more. Elsewhere, our team of film buffs weigh in on Gonzo, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Full Battle Rattle, Meet Dave and more. Elsewhere still, we sent Andrew Leahey into the wilds of Michigan to cover Rothbury last weekend. You can read his findings, which include John Mayer, Snoop Dogg, Ingrid Michaelson, The Black Keys, Beth Orton, Jakob Dylan and so much more, on our Festivus blog.

As usual, it was a busy news week. If you're a fan of some no-name piano-playing dude named Ben Folds, you may have heard that he has a new album coming in September, and that's thanks to our story that broke the news. Other bands with record-release announcements this week on PasteMagazine.com include ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, various Suicide fans including Bruce Springsteen, Portishead, the loved-by-Gucci Brooklyn duo MGMT, Charlie Louvin (two of them!), Deerhunter, Tenacious D, Cold War Kids, Dungen and High Places. Yup. If you have that one annoying friend who's always whining, "There's no interesting music anymore!" feel free to send him or her a link to this story.

Aside from a record store near you, there is plenty of music of the touring variety to be found all over the world at this moment and moments coming very soon. In addition to several of the artists listed above, Wilco, Black Kids, Stars, Supergrass and Foo Fighters, Broken Social Scene and more are making the rounds this summer and fall.

There seemed to be a little less going on in the film world this week than usual, but it wasn't without its highlights. Quentin Tarantino's new film is getting closer to reality, Annette Bening joined the Academy, the Screen Actors Guild rejected a contract offer and NBC bought the Weather Channel, just to name a few.

But really, there's too much to list here. Have a look at the news archives for more.

Time is running out on me as I type this, so I'm going to have to cut it off. But before I go, be sure to check out our full Q&A with Folds, additional interviews with Kate Rusby, John Moen (of Decemberists and Perhapst fame), DeVotchKa and more, blog posts of varying sorts (including a Tom Petty live review, the triumphant return of my desk buddy's running feature Rhymes with Five, lots of videos and so on), The Informer's many events...

Phew.

Really, I could go on all day, and I'm leaving so much out, so why don' t you have a look around? Sound off on what you liked, disliked, want to see in the future and all that in the comments below. Have a great weekend and we'll talk again next week.

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