The tour will feature Coheed and Cambria performing their 2002 debut album The Second Stage Turbine Blade in whole at each venue. After a 30-40 minute acoustic set, the band will then perform a mix of other songs from their catalog. The tour kicks off on April 8th in Kansas City, MO, and features stops in Tampa, FL, Baltimore, MD, Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, Denver, CO, and beyond before wrapping up on May 11th in Los Angeles, CA. Check out the entire tour schedule below.

A special pre-sale for the tour starts on January 12th at the band’s official site.

Coheed and Cambria 2011 Tour Dates:
04/08 — Kansas City, MO @ Midland Theater
04/09 — Dallas, TX @ Palladium
04/11 — Austin, TX @ Stubbs
04/12 — Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
04/14 — Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
04/15 — Tampa, FL @ Jannus Live
04/18 — Charlotte, NC @ Fillmore
04/19 — Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live
04/20 — Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
04/22 — Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom
04/25 — Boston, MA @ House of Blues
04/26 — Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
04/27 — Toronto, ON @ Kool Haus
04/29 — Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theater
04/30 — Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
05/02 — Denver, CO @ Ogden Theater
05/03 — Salt Lake City, UT @ In the Venue
05/05 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox Sodo
05/06 — Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
05/07 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
05/09 — San Diego, CA 2 House of Blues
05/10 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theater
05/11 — Los Angeles, CA @ Club Nokia

In 2010, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark released their first album in 14 years with History Of Modern. In 2011, the iconic UK outfit will support the release with their first North American tour with their original lineup since 1988. Got to get it all done before the world ends, amirite?

The trek begins March 5th in Toronto, with a trip down the U.S. East Coast scheduled for the days that follow. OMD will then hit the Midwest in mid-March before making an appearance at the Austin-based South by Southwest. They’ll conclude their travels with two dates in California, ending March 26th in San Francisco.Find all confirmed tour dates below.

The band had been rumored to be playing Coachela 2011, but there’s no word if the band plans to return to California in mid-April.

According to an issued press release, OMD will play a set that mixes their most celebrated and classic hits; “Enola Gay”, “So In Love”, “If You Leave”, and “Souvenir” with new songs, “creating a distinctly contemporary live show.”

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark 2011 Tour Dates:
03/05 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
03/06 – Montreal, QC @ Le National
03/07 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
03/08 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall/Irving Plaza
03/10 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
03/12 – Chicago, IL @ Park West
03/14 – Atlanta, GA @ The Loft
03/16 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues
03/17-19 – Austin, TX @ South by Southwest
03/20 – Dallas, TX @ House Of Blues/Granada Theatre
03/22 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theatre
03/23 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Depot
03/25 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Music Box
03/26 – San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom
06/23 – Leipzig, DE @ Clara-zetkin-parkbühne
06/26 – Dresden, DE @ Elbufer
09/02 – Hamburg, DE @ Stadpark
09/05 – Berlin, DE @ Sommergarten

If the name Alex Ebert isn’t familiar, then perhaps you may know him better for his work with Edward Sharpe & The Magentic Zeros. The band’s lead singer, who was also the frontman of Ima Robot, is now looking for people to know the real him as he readies his debut album Alexander for release on March 1st. A name tag would probably be just as effective, Mr. Ebert.

Accustomed to working with the 10-person line-up of Edward Sharpe, Ebert crafted the album all on his own during breaks with the band over the past year. However, that creative solitude was quite the experience for Ebert, who said in a press release that the album is ” a very humble album with sky’s-the-limit sort of qualities, and so I didn’t really shy away from doing whatever I felt like doing.” That means the singer was more than happy to bust out the violin, the clarinet, and even engage in slapping his own knees to make the album’s unique sound.

Check out the tracklist below. Ebert plans to support the LP by playing a few shows, including gigs at South by Southwest, before returning to the studio with Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros to record their sophomore LP, which is due out later in 2011. Alexander hits stores March 1st via Community Music.

Alexander Tracklist:
01. Let’s Win!
02. Awake My Body
03. Truth
04. In The Twilight
05. Bad Bad Love
06. Old Friend
07. A Million Years
08. Remember Our Heart
09. Glimpses
10. Let’s Make A Deal To Not Make A Deal

As one of the 50 most important albums of 2011, you’d think they’d go ahead and make fans wait for the ninth LP from singer-songwriter PJ Harvey until its actual February 15th release date. However, with two tracks already out there for sampling (“Written On The Forehead” and “The Last Living Rose”), eager fans can now hear three more offerings from Let England Shake, courtesy of Antiquet. Head there now to wrap your ears around “Bitter Branches”, “Hanging In The Wire”, and “Glorious Land”. Guess waiting another month won’t be that bad after all.

Let England Shake hit stores February 15th via Vagrant Records.

Kate Moss might be best known for her romance with Peter Doherty, but the UK model is also becoming the go-to cover girl in indie circles. Last year, she covered Bryan Ferry’s latest album and now, she is the topic of a new music video for Anthony and the Johnsons’ song “Everglade”, off last year’s The Crying Light. Per the video’s accompanying description:

“Antony recently collaborated with artists Inez and Vinoodh, whom have photographed him in the past, on a short video. While shooting the fall/winter 2010/2011 Balmain campaign staring Kate Moss, the pair set up surveillance cameras without anyone’s knowledge to capture her performance. They then edited and added animation to the footage, which became the short film Everglade, named after the Antony and the Johnsons song that serves as its soundtrack.”

In equally stimulating news, Antony and the Johnsons are working on a forthcoming EP and video due out on Secretly Canadian this Spring. What’s more, the outfit is also booked to perform at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California on March 1st. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to spreading ideas and bringing together people in the technology, entertainment and design fields.

Gaga and Katy currently rule the charts, but let us not forget the life and times of 90s pop. Before Christina went indie, Mandy married Ryan, and Britney got a haircut, “Genie in the Bottle” and “Oops!…I Did It Again” were our guilty pleasures. Of course, 2/3 of those aforementioned still remain forces in the industry — believe it or not, Britney’s last album, 2008′s Circus, moved 4 million copies — which brings us to today. Britney’s back. In March, the pop icon will release her yet-to-be-titled seventh album and today, Jive Records offered the first taste of what’s to come in the form of lead single “Hold It Against Me”. Produced by Max Martin and Dr. Luke, the 3:50 track mixes classic Britney with British dubstep elements, though not the kind you James Blake fans are used to. At first listen, it’s not necessarily her strongest effort to date, but it might be her trippiest, and with electrohead Rusko also said to be contributing to the effort, expect to hear that word used quite a bit to describe the new album.

Stream “Hold It Against Me” (via Vulture). Birtney’s LP #7 is due March 2011 via Jive.

Drizzy Drake is kicking off 2011 in the UK and during the second night of his 2-night stint at London’s Hammersmith Apollo last weekend, the much-touted MC brought out Florence and the Machine songstress Florence Welch to fill Alicia Keys’ shoes for a performance of “Fireworks”. Thank him now.

I’m a romantic at heart.

Ask any of my friends, and any time I meet a new girl and things look promising, I swoon. This isn’t meant to frighten any potential girlfriends, because it’s not an obsessive doting, but rather just a dedication to the whole feeling of new romance. I am just one of those people who really likes being with someone. I blame being in a relationship for seven years. I blame that I was born under Saturn or whatever. But what I really blame is music. I blame pop songs for my overly mushy dedication to the ladies, for my heart strings being tugged so easily, and for my superpower to jump from 0 cuddlekins per hour to 60 cuddlekins per hour in . 5 seconds (cuddlekins being, of course, my fictional measurement of love).

So while Rob Gordon questions pop music’s correlation to misery, I fully know that every song I’ve ever heard has made me the sentimental sucker I am today. I’ve accepted it, appreciated it, almost grown to love it, in fact. But what got me really thinking is this: How far does that musical virus impact me? How has it rewritten the DNA of my heart (yes, I wrote that)? What has it done to my relationships? Does music play a part in the way I love? In essence, does a comparable and/or superior musical taste come off to me as some kind of glorious musk, throwing me into a state of heat and demanding my immediate infatuation with the well-versed lioness? Awful mental images aside, the answer has to be yes; thankfully, though, I am not alone. For some reason, music and a person’s taste are either an aphrodisiac or an immediate warning to run for the hills. Whether we like it or not, the sounds a future partner consumes do more for the relationship than hours of deep, emotional sharing could ever do. Plus, sharing feelings is lame.

Undoubtedly, there’s many of you out there who have achieved this point of understanding; I applaud you for your insight into the human condition and hope you enjoy being alone in your sanctimonious pit of despair. But there may be others who don’t give as much credence to our choices in pop culture as deciding factors in L-O-V-E; to you, I say pay attention while Papa Chris weaves you a sexy yarn. At its most very basic, music is an immediate picture of someone’s life. You’re out on a date, and this girl says she loves Slayer, Pantera, and other legends of thrash. From this microcosm of conversation, you could probably guess her views on dealing with emotions (in that they suck and everything is horrible), her partying habits (vodka and shotgunning beers), or even the kind of lover she could be (I’ll let you paint that picture). And the same goes for every other kind of music. If she loves Broadway musicals, she’s a classy broad, with a touch for the dramatic. She likes power-pop? Think immature and probably someone who wears skirts with Chuck Taylors. Yes, these are gross exaggerations and stereotypes pumped to their most absurd, but whether there’s a grain of truth to these or not, one can’t help associating certain worldviews and behavior types with certain genres. And that will surely have at least some impact on your overall opinion of their person. Whether you totally pegged that metal chick for an anti-social daddy’s girl with a drinking problem or not, you’re already thinking elephants.

In a less pseudo-science, bullshit-esque sort of way, music impacts our love lives because who the hell wants to live on Rolling Stones Island when you’re from Beatles-opolis? Whether we think that future mate is intelligent and funny and caring or not matters way more, but if you’re staring down the barrel of a long-term commitment to the girl of your dreams and your least favorite band, no amount of hugs and kisses will ever make you 100% certain. That’s not, however, to say that the whole music choice thing can’t be invalidated by love; I spent a chunk of my life happily hearing Christina Aguilera. But on the other hand, it sounds sort of blissful, on paper at least, when you’re looking toward days of bands you love and enjoy listening to. Having comparable music taste is like a sign from a higher power or like a really good match rating on eHarmony. Emotional, physical, and intellectual compatibility are really hard to decipher, but you know you’ve got something good when you both have a nearly-identical list of artists on your iPod.

If I had made this argument even 15 years ago, there’s a good chance that it could be more easily shot down, but now, thanks to the Internet, the camps of people have been clearly drawn, and there’s no arguing the fact that popular culture saturates and reigns over the lives of Generation Y. Our parents and grandparents had culture to bond over (not to mention wars and social movements), but ALL our generation has is culture and the things we consume. We’re without some global, unifying social movement or world event, instead left to be splintered by our beloved technology and generally (and comparably) easier lifestyles. It’s abundantly clear that dating someone outside of your musical taste is the modern day interracial marriage; sure, it’s not quite as deadly or groundbreaking, but how many people would guffaw at some modern-day punk chick marrying some button-downed broker? In fact, take a look at your own partner right now.

If our generation is so perfectly summarized by the culture we imbibe, can you say that you’ve chosen someone who doesn’t have a similar cultural makeup? Are you really that different in the sounds and sights that make up your personalities? If you are, bravo; you’re a better person than I. Chances are, though, that you’re different sides of the same cultural prism. This isn’t a condemnation in any regards; once more, there’s something soothing about being able to discern a mate from a smaller splinter group and to already know the kind of political beliefs, emotional openness and vulnerabilities, and other personality aspects to expect before word one. None of that would be possible without a few simple songs.

The Black Keys appeared on Saturday Night Live last night and proceeded to kick musical ass with performances of “Howlin’ For You” and “Tighten Up” (AKA the third best song of 2010). In much more surprising news, Dan Auerbach shaved beforehand.

Thanks to The Audio Perv for video support.

You probably weren’t home last night to watch No Age decimate Letterman’s ears with a performance of Everything In Between‘s “Fever Dreaming”, so check it out in the clip above.