Cash or 50 Cent? Rascall Flatts or T.I.? Who's playing cops and robbers and who's grabbing their submachines might surprise you. Test your knowledge of country and rap's most violent lyrics with the following quiz:

It may have taken Brendan Canning 18 years to release his first solo disc, but like his bandmate Kevin Drew before him, he has loads of help. Co-founder and leader of Canada’s Broken Social Scene, Drew planted the inaugural “Broken Social Scene Presents:” flag with Spirit If…, a solo album masked as a Broken Social Scene proper release or vice-versa. Despite the latent marketing cash-in with the album’s title, it wowed audiences and critics alike.

Hometown: Nashville, Tenn.

Members: Trevor Nyman, Dave Arnold, Tim Twinem and Jeremy Flick

Fun Fact: The band is currently scoring indie film The Time Closet.

Why It's Worth Watching: The Champion and His Burning Flame strives for the whole artistic package, from the recording process to photography and packaging, from the stage to, in the near future, print.

For Fans Of: Elliott Smith, Bishop Allen, The Shins

At a little more than a year's worth of bandship, this could be considered a fledgling pursuit. However, there is a chemistry and honesty in The Champion and His Burning Flame's inaugural effort, The French EP, that begs for listening, pondering and then listening again. Twenty-two minutes and change span six chapters, each portraying an observation of social interaction.

Henry Rollins speaks not in drops and dribbles. When he opens his month, torrents of declarations spill out that condemn and praise in turns, ventriloquizing voices to buoy as well as others to deride.

Efterklang Members: (L-R) Casper Clausen, Rune Mølgaard, Thomas Husmer, Rasmus Stolberg, Mads Brauer
Hometown: Copenhagen, Denmark
Album Title: Parades
For Fans Of: Sigur Rós, Múm, Sufjan Stevens

I was like, ‘What is going on?’” jokes Rasmus Stolberg in response to the critical success of 2007’s Parades, the latest LP from his Copenhagen-based ensemble, Efterklang. As we talk, he’s hustling from car to tour bus with a borrowed cell phone pinched between his shoulder and ear, moving luggage and fielding questions between breaths. Stolberg and his seven cohorts have just arrived in Boulder, Colo., and still need to make it to the post office in time to snag a rush shipment of T-shirts before heading into Denver for the first show of their extensive (and jokingly titled) Danish Dynamite tour with their friends in Slaraffenland. Today is slightly chaotic.

Hometown: Amsterdam
For Fans Of: Michel Gondry, MC Escher

It’s easy to mistake Roel Wouters for a filmmaker. “[What I do is] more about creating a certain circumstance or a certain condition,” insists the 32-year-old Dutch artist who works under the moniker Xelor (a lawsuit-avoiding variance on his more natural nickname, Rolex). Though his creations encompass graphic design, web conceptualizations and performance art, Wouters’ videos for zZz’s “Grip” and My Robot Friend’s “Robot High School” are the fullest realization of his “machines” yet, each a one-take mindbender based on a Gondry-like series of inventions.

Trawling Amazon’s used CD listings, Paste noticed a startling trend. If the comments sections are to be trusted, incredible numbers of music fans are buying albums, playing them exactly one time, and then whisking them off to the land of eCommerce. To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, we embarked on a rigorous series of fake interviews with these hasty sellers, to find out why a certain album graced their CD player exactly once, and not a moment more.

Hometown: Decatur, Ga.

Fun Fact: As a teenager, vocalist Chris Rowell arrived at a party in Birmingham, Ala. after midnight and told a total stranger that he felt like there was a drummer in their midst. He was introduced to future Warm In The Wake drummer James Taylor Jr. for the first time moments later and the two formed a bond that has spanned a decade and a half.

Why It's Worth Watching: As raconteurs for the everyman, the band's unique brand of American Realist Rock combines scenic snapshots of the tangible and unhurried, organic instrumentation with a nod to Regionalist painter Andrew Wyeth.

For Fans Of: Band of Horses, Bon Iver, Cass McCombs, The National

"It's about needing to feed the exploration part of our personalities. I mean geographically," explains vocalist and guitarist Chris Rowell, describing the mindset behind the opening track on Warm In The Wake's new, digitally-released EP, Speak Plainly. "Not whatever dirty thing you were thinking," he continues, every bit as straightforward about the group's third recorded effort as would be expected from the no-nonsense lyricist.

When a young Chuck Palahniuk pitched his novel Invisible Monsters to publishers, it was rejected because it was too disturbing. His response was to fill his next novel, Fight Club, with even more disturbing and violent events and dub himself a writer of “transgressional fiction.” One of his favorite stories for live readings is the short story “Guts,” from his collection Haunted, because the accounts of masturbation that met a violent end caused several of his audience members to actually faint. His worlds are shocking, but his readers eat it up not simply because they like blood and guts—his stories aim to shock like a defibrillator, to wake you up from the mundane and remind you that while terrible things can always be around the corner, you might just be able to withstand them.

The latest film adaptation of one of his books, Choke, hits theaters today.

In the past decade, Old Crow Medicine Show has grown from nomadic old-time street buskers to big-stage, anti-establishment Nashville aces, selling out their hometown’s venerable Ryman Auditorium last fall and returning for a two-night stand this October. In September, the rowdy string band revivalists will release their third full-length album, Tennessee Pusher, on Nettwerk Records. Despite the title, the disc took the band outside of its home state for the first time to record in the big lot confines of Hollywood’s Henson Recording Studios, where they traded the guidance of Old Crow mentor David Rawlings, who produced the band’s first two discs, for veteran studio ace Don Was (Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy-winning Nick of Time).

Paste recently caught up with fiddler and songwriter Ketch Secor, who revealed a bit about the new disc and the band's never-ending obligation to play “Wagon Wheel,” the band's one hint of mainstream country crossover success, now edging into the realm of frat-party anthem.