A very rockin' band from Austin, Texas! In their own words: The Incredible Adam Tyner on the drums Ladies and Gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dig the Guitar Crimes! Mr. Randy Plants Thomas!!!!!! Ladies and Gentlemen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On Bass Guitar.... Lookout Ladies! ...It's Loaded.... It's time to eat Crow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ladies and gentlemen, let the stadium know, it's time for the show, we bring you the FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHO WANTS TO F$%# THE BAND!!!! C'MON!!!!!!

Of course, that meant he was the hardest-partying member, too - and considering the well-chronicled exploits of Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars, that's really saying something. Nikki Sixx's walks on the wild side are the stuff of Sunset Strip legend, and have inspired some of the Crüe's most harrowing songs: "Kickstart My Heart" (about the night he was declared legally dead and had to be revived by paramedics), "Dancing On Glass" (about the time he was thrown, unconscious, into a dumpster by a security guard). Now older and wiser, Nikki Sixx isn't exactly proud of these experiments in wild debauchery, but neither does he disavow them. They were part of a path toward enlightenment, and they've granted the bassist a singular perspective. And with Sixx A.M., Nikki and a new group of inspired musicians are turning those memories of Eighties excess into something altogether more edifying.

The Heroin Diaries were discovered by accident: Sixx was cleaning out a closet and chanced upon notebooks he'd scribbled during the height of his addiction. Realizing that the diaries constituted an astonishingly honest (and, to be fair, black-comic) chronicle of the long slide into drug madness, Sixx decided that they deserved to be shared with the world. The Heroin Diaries will be published on September 18 - and not content with the written word alone, the bassist assembled Sixx A.M. to compose a soundtrack. "Life Is Beautiful", the hard-rocking lead single, deals with themes made explicit in the book: the desire to break through into an altered state, the attraction of chaos, and the wisdom that comes from pushing yourself to the limit.

There's plenty of footage of Sixx A.M. in performance in the expressive video for "Life Is Beautiful"; Nikki Sixx, in particular, rocks as hard as he did with Mötley Crüe. He looks great, too: poised, dignified even! A face on metal's Mount Rushmore, a grizzled rock and roll survivor. Yet there's evidence of Sixx's new literary turn all over this clip: shots crumple up like pages of a book, and words, scrawled in red ink and culled from the lyric, float over the band as they play. The video opens with Sixx reciting a remarkable line from the diary - "there's nothing like a trail of blood to help you find your way back home" - and ends with the bassist offering another spoken reflection on the price of knowledge. Mötley Crüe once gave the impression that they were a band that could care less about lyrics; now, their leader, spokesperson, and principal songwriter wants to make sure that you catch - and understand - every last word.

Smoke or Fire is back after a tour of the world, a lineup change and months spent working on their sophomore full-length, This Sinking Ship. The band has always kept their fans alert over the years, but things are more concrete than ever for Smoke or Fire and their sound remains true. Clearly influenced by predecessors like Hot Water Music and Avail, these young upstarts also blend in some additional elements of Americana with their hints of The Replacements and Springsteen.

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

Every new video from Chemical Tom and Chemical Ed is a reason for celebration, and "The Salmon Dance" is no exception: this is sure to be remembered as one of the year's singular clips. Sure, you've seen terrific synchronized dancing in music videos before - but have you ever seen spectacular choreography in a fish tank? Friends, you're about to.

But before plunging into our discussion of this fabulous video, a few words about the international success of We Are The Night, the sixth and most stylistically varied studio album by the Chemical Brothers. The set made its debut at #1 on the British charts, and "Do It Again", the lead single, broke into Top Tens across the world - including Italy, Lithuania, and Japan. We Are The Night re-established the Brothers (not that they ever went anywhere, but pop fans are fickle and need reminders) as the globe's most reliable electro-rock hitmakers. The album drew raves upon its release; The Guardian confirmed that the duo hasn't lost a bit of their edge, and called We Are The Night "their most brilliant work since 1999's Surrender".

"The Salmon Dance" is exactly what it claims to be: instructions on how to gyrate like a fish swimming upstream. Of course, the beat is huge and the bass riff is indelible, and when you've got a dance teacher as funny and commanding as guest emcee Fatlip (The Pharcyde, solo LP The Loneliest Punk) these lessons are nothing but a pleasure. The breaks in the beats are crammed with facts about salmon - there's good science in this song as well as a great kick-drum - and the tremolo synthesizer in the verse gives the track a definite aquatic feel. The Chemical Brothers sponsored a contest in which the creator of the best video upload of a "salmon dance" would win tickets to a show - but they barely needed to offer an enticement. Within hours of the release of the single, a Salmon Dance group had already organized on YouTube, and countless homemade interpretations of Fatlip's instructions had been posted.

These are amusing as hell, and they're testament to The Chemical Brothers's enduring ability to connect with creative people around the world. But none is quite so inspired as the official clip for "The Salmon Dance". The video stars Rory Jennings - well-known in Britain for his role in the soap opera Eastenders - as a young man with a surprisingly expressive set of pet fish. He drifts from bed to the aquarium on the wall, and is greeted there by the big fish voiced by Fatlip, "Sammy the Salmon", and a beatboxing puffer. A plastic diver on the floor of the aquarium opens and shuts a treasure chest, and bubbles rise on the beat to the surface of the water. Jennings stares in amazement as the fish begin to rap - but when the song hits the chorus, an array of seahorses twist and float in psychedelic formation. Others swim in rows, forming cubes and sine-waves in the middle of the tank. He nods along, smiles wildly, and kisses the gourami through the glass. Then the air around him begins the change: cars outside the window float up toward the full moon. The world has become an aquarium - and everything is dancing along.

Lately, The Dollyrots and their music have been turning up everywhere. The band has shared stages with the like-minded Muffs and Soviettes, they're currently touring the nation, and they'll be hooking up with the Warped Tour in July. Dollyrots songs have been used on CSI:NY, and frontwoman Kelly Ogden appeared in an episode of the program as the bassist of a fictitious rock group (and even got to be "murdered" on network TV by a bandmate! How punk is that?) The exuberant "Watch Me Go (Kissed Me, Killed Me)" is set to be featured on The Simple Life; "This Cruch" received airtime on The Style Network and lead single "Because I'm Awesome" on Ugly Betty. Sirius Radio deejay and rock 'n' roll hero Little Steven named "Because I'm Awesome" the "coolest song in the world".

The track offers some ironic self-affirmation. It's all done with a wink and put-on pout, and it's as much a critique of the pomp and hyperbole of the music industry as it is a commentary on culture of self-promotion in Los Angeles. For the video, they've also found the perfect metaphor: the tryouts of American Idol. The clip finds the band at the filming of a hypothetical reality show called Because I'm Awesome, and the camera scans the long lines of disaffected performers waiting to strut their stuff. The judges are here, too, leaning back in their padded chairs, pointing pens at the would-be rock stars, and critiquing the performances with a diagnostic eye and a sense of entitlement. The three Dollyrots stand before the logo in different guises: a California girl, a cowboy, a rapper in a hoodie, a glamour queen in a black dress, an anarchic cheerleader. Ogden even puts on a bunny suit with a gas mask and shoves the other contestants. The Dollyrots won't play by the rules; they're storming the gates of the fame industry on their own terms, and according to their own offbeat logic.

Then again, The Exies have always been independents at heart; they're a band unafraid to take risks and make bold moves. For instance, their second 2007 single isn't an album cut at all - it's an Internet-only release, and it's accompanied by an incendiary clip that's already become a sensation on video-sharing sites like YouTube. "God We Look Good (Going Down In Flames)" is a gutsy broadside against the state of contemporary media, a critique of celebrity culture, and a savaging of that which passes for political discourse on the modern airwaves. We have, Stevens seems to be suggesting, lost our nerve at a crucial moment, and we've become distracted by sideshows. "This is the pill, the pill that we swallow," he howls, his reference to The Matrix evident, "the death of us all, the cash, the kill - they're selling us off to make the deal."

The video for "God We Look Good (Going Down In Flames)" is similarly confrontational - and similarly unapologetic. Images flash by, one after another, none lingering on the screen for more than a second. It's like channel-surfing on speed, and at this rate, every shot projected becomes near-subliminal and loaded with meaning. But none of the footage assembled by The Exies will feel unfamiliar to anybody who's got a television: we're shown the faces of complicit politicians, shots of violence, sex, weeping celebrities carted off to prison, missiles, dollar signs, works of fine art, religious symbols, guns. The words "are you ready to go?" and "sell out" struggle to surface; they're a message fighting its way through the chaos. Stevens, too, breaks into the frame from time to time, and he forces his way straight up to the camera to deliver his accusation, as if he's besieged on all sides and wants to make sure he's getting his message across. He grabs the attention of the lens and hangs on to his connection with his audience while he can, like a pit bull with its prey in its mouth. But the tilt-a-whirl of images rushes on, oblivious to objection and seemingly beyond control. Who cycles through these channels, and who stands behind the rush of content that now fills the televised airwaves? The implication here is that nobody is in control: that, instead, we're all being washed downstream by a torrent of meaningless news and gossip, one greased by money and power but generated and perpetuated by its own sick momentum.