Sonata Arctica is a Finnish power metal band from the town of Kemi, originally assembled in 1996. Their later albums (particularly Unia) are also often cited as part of the progressive metal genre.

Scott Culver has made memorable promo clips for Yellowcard, Halifax, The Early November, hellogoodbye and many other popular contemporary bands, and it's often been our pleasure to share these videos with you. Culver makes the rock groups he works with look fantastic: iconic and inevitable, shooting stars in mid-trajectory. He's particularly adept at pairing great on-camera performances with striking, evocative imagery. Now, the veteran director has turned his talents to Soundside - and he couldn't have found a more appropriate canvas for his work.

For starters, Soundside shares more than just an approach with the bands Culver has worked with before - they've shared stages, too. The L.I. quartet (besides being a great band name, "soundside" is local slang for the northern half of the island) has played everywhere from the Knitting Factory in New York to the Carrier Dome in Syracuse. Their explosive live set has made them a substantial draw on the Northeastern club circuit, and they'll soon be bringing their sound to the rest of the country: the release of Seconds From Sunrise, their newest album, will be accompanied by a tour and a nationwide radio campaign. Singer Rich Arcati's backstory is one of the most notable in modern rock - he's half-Mexican and a fluent Spanish speaker, and his growing discography features an EP of Soundside canciones en Espanol. Clearly this is a band making a conscientious effort to reach as wide an audience as possible - and one with the tools and talent to do so.

Produced by Angus Cooke of The Ataris, Seconds From Sunrise is a collection of muscular, arena-ready, and immediately winning modern rock songs. It's unabashedly eclectic, too: Soundside's music is just as forceful with acoustic instruments as they are with their amps cranked, and folk, prog, and reggae(!) influences can be felt in these grooves. But the predominant sound here is both heavy and melodic, and "Loss For Words" epitomizes that approach. The song builds from an angular guitar riff to an anthemic chorus, and Arcati delivers his story with passion, power, and tremendous conviction.

Culver's Little Prince-inspired clip for "Loss For Words" finds Soundside in stratospheric territory - quite literally! They're playing on a small asteroid hurtling through space; as the stars and planets hurtle through space behind them, the curvature of their sphere is evident. But there are even smaller orbs in this firmament, and they're inhabited - one, grassy and fertile, by a little girl celebrating her birthday, and another, barren and smoking, by a young boy with a telescope. They're alone, and lonely; separated by an interstellar gulf. The boy has a net sturdy enough to catch a comet, though - and once he's got one, he rides it through the blackness to meet her on her planet.

Adventures In The Underground Journey To The Stars, the latest album from South (and their first for Young American Recordings), is well titled: it really does feel like a trip across the stratosphere. Singer and bassist Joel Cadbury's voice can float elegantly atop the blissed-out mixes, but when necessary, he proves he can shout out an indie rock lead vocal as well as any Britpop frontman. The "You Are One" clip amplifies the gauzy, dizzy and slightly destabilized feel of South's production on Adventures In The Underground Journey To The Stars. It would be misleading to call it psychedelic, but it does put the band - and the viewer - through a resolutely altered state. The entire clip is shot through a distorted lens that warps the faces and bodies of the bandmembers: the closer they get to the center of the screen, the smaller they look. As the musicians address the camera, their heads shrink, disappear altogether, bend and twist, and pull apart like taffy. But this isn't the only effect employed: instead of fluid motion, the video consists of quick, herky-jerky cuts. So "You Are One" leaps from one warped image to the next - instead of flowing toward the corners like oil pressed under glass, the members of South appear to stretch mechanically, their bodies slanting unnaturally to the corners of the screen. Check out this mind bending video!

It's been five years since we last heard from Jason "Spaceman" Pierce, the electrifying, tormented, and otherworldly frontman of Spiritualized - and given the troubling subject matter of his songs, many of us had suspected the worst. Turns out that dark speculation wasn't too far from the truth: Pierce spent much of 2005 in the emergency room, trapped in a life-and-death battle with cranial infection and double pneumonia. The singer-slash-composer won the ultimate prizefight, and he's back with a new set of tales heavily informed by his protracted encounter with his own vexed mortality. Surely it's not right to find utility in the misfortune of others, but if we could pick one artist to journey to the lip of death and report on what he'd seen there, Jason Pierce would be the one.

That's because nobody sings about transcendence and altered states with more authority than Pierce does. His albums with Spiritualized are modern classics not merely because of their bold experimentation, mind-altering phasing effects, and monumental sound - they're also invariably personal, painfully honest, and deeply human. Those who've called Spiritualized a "drug" band have always missed the point (even while reveling in the group's unparalleled trippiness): Pierce's music takes the listener on a voyage beyond the limits of his own quotidian consciousness. Love, sex, religion, and pharmaceuticals are, in the hands of the writer, all metaphors - methods for attaining spiritual freedom. And freedom, as Pierce informs us in "Soul On Fire", is just another word for when you have no one left to hurt.

In interviews, Pierce promised that Songs in A&E would be the work of the Devil, and judging by the sound of "Soul On Fire", he's managed to capture the Archfiend in all of his diabolical glory. The "A&E" of the title aren't just musical keys - they also refer to the accident and emergency ward in which the singer was confined. In his cracked, conversational, and hypnotic voice, Pierce sings of a hurricane blowing through his veins: he's been to the edge, and his performance bears all the hallmarks of terrifying lived experience. Ironically, Spiritualized has never sounded any more glorious than they do here - their unprecedented and vigorous fusion of Brit-pop, space-rock, gospel, old-fashioned R&B, country, blues, and art-psych remains wholly intact here, lurid, radiant, pulsating in vibrant color.

As anybody who has ever spun Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space or Let It Come Down can testify to, Spiritualized's music often feels like a force of nature. Consequently, the bar is set high for any Spiritualized video: it must capture some of the crazed grandeur of Pierce's signature sound. We're thrilled to say that the "Soul On Fire" clip rises to the challenge - it's as breathtakingly beautiful as it is harrowing. The video finds Pierce at rest on a frozen Icelandic landscape, cheek pressed against the glacier as he sings. Wind whips a froth of snow from rocky crags behind him, and the northern lights dance in the sky overhead. Still shots of syringes and medical equipment strongly suggest that Pierce is, in fact, confined to a hospital bed, and that this dizzying vista is, in fact, his internal landscape.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the group's sixth full-length, looks poised to build on the commercial and artistic success of Gimme Fiction - an album that topped many critics' lists of the landmark releases of 2005. "Spoon continues to build one of the most consistent, and distinctive, bodies of work in indie rock", raved Heather Phares of the All-Music Guide, "the band makes changes and takes chances from album to album, but ends up sounding exactly how Spoon should sound each time." Gimme Fiction was a darker and heavier album than anything Daniel & Co. had done this decade, but it retained the Stax and Motown elements that made Girls Can Tell and Kill The Moonlight such unusually propulsive (and danceable) indie rock records. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga promises further innovation; we won't know for sure until July 10, but lead single "The Underdog" sure suggests that it'll be another killer set. Producer Jon Brion (Kanye West, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann), adds a full horn section to the usual Spoon algebra of acoustic guitar, intricate drumming, and imaginative use of alternate percussion. Britt Daniel has one of the most recognizable voices in contemporary music, and here he wraps it around a melodic hook that's succinct, sharp, and unforgettable

Pick a musical Top Ten list for 2007 - chances are, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is on it. Few albums have ever been so warmly-received by critics and listeners as has Spoon's latest. It's been praised by mainstream magazines like Rolling Stone ("You Got Yr Cherry Bomb" from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga placed #16 on the publication's rundown of the best songs of the year), established rock-crit websites (the album made Pitchfork's in-house Top Ten and the Top Ten of its readers), and countless webloggers and 'zinesters. The set also made an appearance in the Billboard Top Ten, thereby proving that no matter how smart, artful, and forward-looking Spoon's pop might be, it still connects with a mass audience. When we look back on 2007 in the future, Spoon's sixth LP will make a fitting soundtrack.

Now, we've turned the calendar - and the popularity of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is still growing. "Don't You Evah", the latest single, is by acclamation one of the set's highlights: a cover version of an unreleased track by NYC underground favorites (and former Spoon tourmates) The Natural History. But even though Britt Daniel didn't write this one, the song has all the hallmarks we've come to associate with his band: an insistent, funky bassline; a clever arrangement; thoughtful lyrics; inspired and tasteful electric six-string, imaginative percussion; an indelible chorus; a dash of twisted humor; and a winning, conversational performance by the vocalist. "Don't You Evah" has become a concert favorite, found its way into videogames and unofficial fan-made web-clips (including a well-circulated one featuring a dancing yellow robot), and - once again proving Spoon's versatility - even scored an episode of NBC's Chuck.

Spoon's meticulous production has helped to make the band world-famous, but they're also a fantastic performing band. So much attention has been lavished - and rightfully so - on the band's sound that it's easy to forget that they're much more than just a studio creation; in fact, the kaleidoscopic feel of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is not far removed from the experience of hearing Spoon live. In concert, they're groovy, yet economical; propulsive, but succinct; inspiring, but thoughtful. Britt Daniel can hold an audience spellbound, dash their expectations, challenge them, engage minds and feet simultaneously. The official "Don't You Evah" clip catches Spoon onstage, backstage, in the band van, getting to a gig, communicating with packed houses of listeners. The message is clear: Spoon's songwriting and arrangement architecture may be sophisticated, but it's also as organic as any band's.

Britt Daniel is the focus of the "Don't You Evah" video, but he's not the star: this is a group effort, and it's shot that way. As much attention is paid to drummer Jim Eno's shaker as the frontman's six-string. Under a wash of purple and blue light, the group becomes more than a collection of individuals anyway - they're a colorful force, bringing their indie-funk to vivid life. Shots of the band on a crowded city street and in the green-room of the club give the viewer a glimpse into Spoon's camaraderie and mutual respect. They walk to the show together; black silhouettes carrying instruments through the urban night; a tight unit in all senses; prepared for broadcast.