Any lingering doubts about whether Ryan Cabrera is truly a rocker can be put to rest now. "Enemies," the new single from the accomplished The Moon Under Water that Metro Mix notes "...is big and stadium ready," is a bracing listen: this is heartfelt, powerful and passionately-performed modern rock, closer to All-American Rejects or Paramore than anything scaling the soft side of the pop charts. What's more, like every move Cabrera makes these days, it's resolutely independent, self-released and self-made. The singer tells his story of romantic betrayal and cheating hearts - lovers who secretly "want to get caught" - with the authority of lived experience. Everything here has the ring of truth.

And that's exactly the sort of album The Moon Under Water is: confessional, honest, straightforward and crammed with sharply-observed songs about the milieu the singer has inhabited for the past few years. Some have called it an album of L.A. stories, and that it could be - but it could also be about your town, or my town or any town that's touched by the entertainment industry and the culture of vanity it engenders. His hometown daily paper, The Dallas Morning News, notes how it is "an album that is all his own, alterna-gritty and real," and the Cleveland Free Times remarks, "His debut album made him a pop star, but The Moon Under Water could make Cabrera a respected musician." Metro Mix continues "... it must be noted that the guy has a naturally clear voice, less pitch-corrected and polished than most modern-day pop-rockers," while Philly.com declares "there are few recent pop artists who connect with an audience the way singer/songwriter Ryan Cabrera does." Cabrera certainly hasn't turned his back on entertainment: his new songs are tuneful, harmonically rich, beautifully-produced and a hell of a lot of fun. They're all worthy successors to the chart-toppers he had at the beginning of this decade. But there's no disguising the dark undercurrents in his recent writing and we're guessing that Cabrera himself has no intention of concealing the turmoil that animates his latest release.

"Say," the first single from The Moon Under Water, was upbeat - a raucous party-track, all shouts and stinging six-string. It was wildly, unapologetically romantic, and its video reflected that spirit. "Enemies" is the flip-side of that: it's a late-night number born of interpersonal confusion and serious relationship trouble. It's also got a bracing verse and a soaring chorus, and Ryan Cabrera discharges his performance like his life is on the line - and perhaps, in a way, it is. Listen without prejudice and you're bound to come to the same conclusion we did - this is one of the finest radio-rock anthems of summer '08.

That desperation is all over Cabrera's face in the emotionally forthright clip for "Enemies." The singer-songwriter performs in a cage of light: he and his band are framed by the windows of skyscrapers at night. We know we're in a dark cityscape - and just like Los Angeles, this artificial metropolis feels expansive yet oddly claustrophobia-inducing. As the Cabrera band tears through "Enemies," footage of beautiful people in action are projected onto the screen - we see them kissing, fighting, losing track of each other and drifting around the urban ether. Cabrera's girl comes home to find him in bed with another woman. In the ugly aftermath it's hard to tell whether he's fighting with his girlfriend, his mistress or himself. We watch her expression change from one of anger to one of disgust to one of defeat - like everybody else, she's overwhelmed by the confusion of the streets, the roar of the hot lights and the dizziness of speed.

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.

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.

Every year, the hip-hop spotlight seems to shine on a different city and its distinct style. After the national success of "Still Tippin'", 2005 was all about the H-Town sound. Then, "Vans" and "Yadadamean" turned our attention to the Bay area and the hyphy movement. So where to next? There's no way to know for sure, but all signs point to Chicago. The recent mainstream success of Kid Sister and Flosstradamus - not to mention the latest bestselling albums from Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West - have inscribed the "Chi sound" and Chicago style on the consciousness of hip-hop nation. It's arty, minimalist, clever, consciously old-school, immediate and appealing to indie rockers, alt-rappers, hip-hop heads, and commercial radio listeners alike. And no group epitomizes Chicago's sound and stance more than The Cool Kids do. Their debt to classic rappers (Rakim, EPMD, A Tribe Called Quest) is apparent in every record they make; their first single borrowed Nas's promise to "bring '88 back". With their baseball caps, tight Run-DMC jeans, and big shades, Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish look like old-school emcees. But like much of the music that's currently come from the Chi, their singles are so straightforward, assured, and approachable that they feel daring, cutting-edge, instantly appealing to adventurous listeners. "Black Mags" has been in heavy hipster rotation ever since its release last autumn; Pitchfork loves it (their set at the 2007 festival hosted by the magazine was a huge hit), and, prompted by the success of the song, Rolling Stone called The Cool Kids one of the ten acts to watch for 2008. But don't mistake this duo for a crossover act - they're pure hip-hop, and they've got the associations to prove it. Last year, they collaborated with reigning titlist Lil Wayne, and they've been touring the country with M.I.A. No upcoming album is any more anticipated by rap fans than theirs. While we're waiting for When Fish Ride Bicycles to drop later this year, we've got the singles and their accompanying videos, and they're fantastic: propulsive, immediate, brassy, dripping with style. Joe Esquivel's visually-stunning black and white clip for "Black Mags" heightens the duo's mystique and situates them within a vital rap tradition. Just as the Houston emcees have their Cadillacs, the Pack have their sneakers, and Lupe has his skateboard, Mikey and Chuck have their BMX bikes. They boast about them, walk them to the curb, and cruise through the city streets on them, passing highways and stop signs, freight trains, crumbling brick warehouses, alleys, ancient Midwestern tenements. There's plenty of fantastic bicycle footage in the "Black Mags" video, and the group of trick riders who back up the emcees are impressive street-corner talents. But the emphasis here is on the two emcees, who, whether on their bikes or off, address the camera with confidence, attitude, and good humor. Esquivel spikes the video with off-kilter and slightly unsettling animations: a cat on a stoop, a bumblebee buzzing around the handlebars, a crowd cheering from atop an overpass, a gigantic plane soaring above the tower blocks. It's a gritty world they inhabit, but one filled with cartoonish irruptions, weird magic, wit..

The sun is roaring here in the Northeast - summer season has begun, and that means lots of teenage kids have plenty of time on their hands. Some will do productive things with their vacations; most, in time-honored summer holiday tradition, will get their kicks in an unauthorized fashion. Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan - known together as The Gutter Twins - identify with the mischief-makers. They've given us a new clip that is a pyromaniac's wet dream: a chronicle of typical suburban boys killing time with some not-so-typical homemade explosives. The "Idle Hands" video is incendiary alright, and if you've got any taste at all for playing with fire (and who doesn't?), you won't be able to look away.

But hellfire comes naturally to The Gutter Twins. The pair's dark, brooding, endlessly fascinating indie rock may not be the sound of the devil at work, but it's probably the closest thing to it you'll hear on earth. Saturnalia has been haunting the indie rock underground since its release, and publications have raced to name it one of the best albums of the year. "The Twins push each other to go darker and deeper, to bare more of their souls," reports Stephen Deusner in his rave Pitchfork review, "so Saturnalia sounds heavier, bleaker, simultaneously more desperate and more content than anything either musician has done". The NME likened single "Idle Hands" to "the sound of Tinariwen and U2 playing a black mass", and calls Saturnalia proof that the devil really does have all the best tunes.

With its distorted guitar riffs and its menacing vocal performances by Lanegan and Dulli, "Idle Hands" already feels like the soundtrack to a day of misdeeds; video director Warren Julius's examination of the exploits of a gang of amateur demolition artists is the perfect accompaniment. The four kids in the "Idle Hands" clip don't look like badasses at all - in fact, they're boys next door, bored youth with dreams of fire and time to kill. We follow them to a desolate dirt-heap on the edge of a city; it could be your town or mine, what matters is that it's out of the reach or interest of any authorities.

They start out innocently enough: shattering lightbulbs with golf clubs, sending bicycles flying over hills and jumping after them, and taping stuffed animals to firecrackers and homemade model rockets. But soon it becomes apparent that a staggering amount of thought, planning, and effort has gone into their pranks - they crash through a constructed wall with a man sized dummy, and later watch as the dummy is blown into death-throe animation by their fireworks. Soon, they are detonating microwave ovens, flinging Molotov cocktails at nearby targets, and lobbing fireballs at explosives; once they pull out a gigantic flamethrower, the post-industrial scene becomes an inferno of post-adolescent mischief. It all looks incredibly dangerous; in fact, one of the boys' shoes briefly catches fire. Julius cuts briskly away from that mishap - we're meant to register the power of the flames, and then continue to watch in fascination. Slo-mo footage and fast-paced editing heightens the drama, the sense of impending trouble, and the feeling of time and energy misspent.

It's easy to see why - not only do the morning benders look and sound like indie superstars, but they've got the knack for writing songs that'll appeal to listeners of all musical genres. With their melodic sensibility, vocal harmonies and instantaneous hooks, the morning benders have been getting comparisons to legendary bands such as The Beatles and The Beach Boys; pretty amazing props for a band composed of kids ages 19 - 22 whose debut album just hit streets. And in Chris Chu, they've unearthed a frontman who's more than ready for the video lens: a sweet-voiced 21 year old California kid with an angel's face. It's no coincidence that Chu plays a harried worker in both of the videos we're sending you today - his downward glances and shy asides to the camera generate instant sympathy.

Chu and the benders have been touring the nation with The Kooks, rocking the Sasquatch, Monolith and Noise Pop festivals, and supporting bands such as and Yo La Tengo, Death Cab For Cutie and MGMT and leaving audiences smitten. Humming back their tunes, too - this quartet pens classic semiacoustic pop tunes that are instantly likeable and invariably memorable. talking through tin cans, the benders's delightful debut (released May 6th on +1 Records), has already drawn raves all over the internet and blogosphere - Stereogum, Idolator, RCRD LBL, imeem, Pitchfork, etc are big fans - as well as mainstream press adoration from John Norris at MTV News, E! News, NPR, Spin, Blender, Filter, Nylon, LA Times, LA Weekly, SF Weekly, SF Bay Guardian, Boston Globe, and much more. They have also been getting lots of love on Live105 and KUSF in San Francisco as well as KCRW, KEXP, XMU and other tastemaking stations. During the week of their album release, the morning benders were featured as the 'indie spotlight' on the homepage of iTunes and on the homepage of YouTube (getting 150,000+ views).

Boarded Doors" is the first single, and we'd wager that its quietly-provocative video is sexy enough to cause a sensation in the generally-staid indipop underground. But just to prove the point that the morning benders are frighteningly-consistent pop craftsmen, we're also appending the clip for second single "Waiting For A War" to this reel. The "Waiting" video is nearly as eye-catching as the "Boarded Doors" clip; taken together, the two spots tell the story of a young band with a coherent sound in complete control of their imagery.

The "Boarded Doors" video was directed by the Daniel Stessen of the acclaimed art collective People-Food (www.people-food.com). The clip casts Chu in the role of Al Bundy's dreams - he's a retail shoe salesman in a store that appears to be frequented only by long-legged women. They sit on the benches and flash their stunning gams at him; he rolls his eyes and struggles to keep control of himself, as these women are many years his senior. We watch him take trips to the stockroom, and emerge with piles of boxes; the store patrons take off their shoes and wait for him in revealing dresses. At first, the women don't pay him much mind, but by the middle of the clip, they're teasing him, ruffling his hair, dancing in front of him, and even kissing his neck. It's a neat parallel to the experience of the working indie band: ignored at first, and then gradually the recipient of all kinds of wanton attention! Chu holds the women off as best as he can (he even dodges a close encounter with a suspicious husband), and at the end of the video, we discover the reason for his restraint, along with a surprise twist. The ending ties neatly to the opening lyric to the song: 'When you find out everything you're looking for/All that's left is an empty house with a boarded door.'

In the "Waiting For A War" video, directed by Alexander Safdie, aka bigAL, and Ronald Schnetke, aka ronnieROYAL, Chu demonstrates a different kind of grace under fire. Once again, his predicament is instantly identifiable: he's a white-collar laborer working in a horrible office, fighting off boredom and frustration in a cubicle that feels like a cell. Crumpled papers are stacked in his overburdened inbox, and his bandmates peer at him over the divider. Lost in a daydream, the walls beyond his office turn into bars, and beyond the grate, there's a cemetery stalked by soldiers. Electronic wires hanging from the trees let us know we haven't left the air-conditioned confines of the office - but that doesn't save Chu from a forced indoctrination into the military. As in the "Boarded Doors" clip, he's dogged by modern ill fortune; once again, he's impossible not to sympathize with, and harder still not to root for.