The new album by Broken Bells, better known as James Mercer of the Shins and Brian Burton (Danger Mouse), is out this week. I couldn't be more thrilled about it.

I had a chance to talk with the guys recently and they were both really excited about the work that they've been doing together. Both James and Brian were invigorated by the experience and were really happy to do something different from what they'd been doing in the past.

Of course, I realized that I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about the status of their previous projects. The response, however, was pretty much what you'd expect. James says that the Shins are still going, just on hiatus. And Brian is not ruling out another Gnarls Barkley album, but it's not really top priority for him. He did hint at a new project, but wouldn't give me any details even though I asked very nicely. I guess we'll just have to wait for more news on that.

Since I spoke to James and Brian several weeks ago, before the tragic death of Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous this past Saturday, we only touched briefly on Brian and James' work with Mark on Dark Night of the Soul. After all kinds of legal hassles holding up the release of that album, all seems to have been resolved over the last couple of weeks and Dark Night of the Soul will likely come out by early summer. Sadly, the album's long overdue release now seems especially bittersweet given Mark's passing. You can find out more about the project here.

Around the time I spoke to Brian and James, their debut album had appeared mysteriously on the internet, nearly a month (or more) before its official release:

Alisa Ali: How did [the Broken Bells] album leak early?

Brian Burton: The version that leaked is not what you have though.

Alisa: Tell me the difference?

James Mercer: It's not mastered, there's parts missing on some of the songs and there's a song missing.

Brian: There's a song missing and there's a song we really didn't include that's on the leak somehow. We don't even know how it happened. It was just an earlier version. I mean, it's similar, it's just not what you have in your hands.

Alisa: It's so funny that it leaked and there are reviews of the leak.

James: I know, it's shameless, isn't it?

Brian: We don't know what the reviews are, don't tell us please!

Alisa: Do you generally not read reviews?

Brian: You hear about them and sometimes if they're really good, they get put in front of you and you'll go, okay, that's cool. But on this one, I think, it's kind of irrelevant really. We've both been doing this for a long time and I think we're kind of meant to do what's on there so if somebody likes it, great.

James: I'm proud of it. I love it.

Joanna Newsom and Freelance Whales enter this week's TAS Top 20 album chart while Yeasayer ambles to the number O.N.E. spot.

1. Yeasayer- Odd Blood

2. Spoon- Transference

3. Vampire Weekend- Contra

4. Beach House- Teen Dream

5. Cold Cave- Love Comes Close

6. BlakRoc- BlakRoc

7. Editors- In This Light and on This Evening

8. Midlake- The Courage of Others

9. The Magnetic Fields- Realism

10. Massive Attack- Heligoland

11. Animal Collective- Fall Be Kind

12. Basia Bulat- Heart of My Own

13. Hot Chip- One Life Stand

14. Broken Bells- Broken Bells

15. Charlotte Gainsbourg- IRM

16. Built to Spill- There is No Enemy

17. Shout Out Louds- Work

18. Ted Leo and The Pharmacists- The Brutalist Bricks

19. Joanna Newsom- Have One on Me

20. Freelance Whales- Weathervane

Who is the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten to say Coldplay and Radiohead are "soulless"? Oh, and there's more from Rotten, real name Johnny Lydon, who told BBC 6Music in December: "Coldplay and Radiohead bug the hell out of me because it's so soulless. It just seems pointless. It's nice, but it's tosh."

"They don't care about you," continued Rotten. "They care about lining their coffers. There's nothing about heart and soul, they don't know about people dying, living, aspiring."

Maybe Thom Yorke or Chris Martin can call out Johnny as "tosh" because Johnny and PiL will be on American television soon for the first time in 18 years.

You think Johnny is jealous? Just being his punk, Sex Pistols self? Or does he have a point? Then again, aside from touring with the reunited Sex Pistols over the last decade, the 54-year-old Rotten, who lives in Los Angeles, did a punk rock advertisement for British butter. He may have needed the butter money for his Just For Men neon orange hair dye, plaid suits, and zippers, zippers, and more zippers.

Johnny and Public Image Limited will be on Jimmy Kimmel Live shortly after midnight on Wednesday, April 7th. Last December John Lydon performed with PiL for the first time in 17 years. The band has set up a tour in North America and for all the dates, head to PiLOfficial.com.

In the meantime if you're a huge PiL fan, Allan Dias, who played bass with PiL, deejays at the Beauty Bar in New York on Tuesday nights.

The Drums make fun pop music. It's easy to like them because their melodies are infectiously catchy. Apparently, though, the folks from Fader magazine are not fans. I learned this because The Drums have a quote from the magazine on the front page of their website that says: "We kind of hate these guys, to be honest."

But that makes me like them even more. They don't have a vast catalog though. In fact, they only have one EP out called "Summertime!," but their debut album will come out later this spring and the first single from that, "Best Friend," drops on March 28.

As for their summer-influenced EP, it has a very warm beachy vibe to it. Their first single is called "Let's Go Surfing." Ironically, none of the band members - singer Jonathan Pierce, guitarist Jacob Graham, guitarist Adam Kessler and drummer Connor Hanwick - surf. They say it's more about the feeling of surfing rather than the actual sport. And that's fine with me. I enjoy listening to that song and I don't even know how to swim.

The band, who are based in Brooklyn by way of Florida, have strangely broken out in a big way in the UK, landing as one of the top five bands on the BBC's Sound of 2010 and winning the notable Philip Hall Radar Award at the Shockwaves NME Awards in late February, an honor that's gone to British bands like The Big Pink and Glasvegas. They recently were part of the Shockwaves NME tour with British bands The Big Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club and The Maccabees.

The Drums' music sounds like 60s girl groups mixed with what the Cure would sound like if they were more upbeat. The Drums have a really wholesome quality to them; it's carefree, feel-good music. Good to sing along with as you joyously dance. Speaking of which, check out Jonathan pulling some indie jitterbug moves during his performance.

It has been three years since Caribou's Dan Snaith released Andorra, the ornate, sunny splash of psychedelic electronica that won him the 2008 Polaris Music Prize, Canada's equivalent of the UK's Mercury Prize.

Snaith is back, apparently inspired by a set of swimming lessons that his wife gave him for Christmas, and has not only learned to remain afloat, but will release his third album Swim on April 20 on Merge. Rather than drifting through the 60s era rock that fueled Andorra, the aquatically-focused Snaith seems to be intrigued with exploring the fluidity of dance music on this album.

"The real substance of the sound of the record for me is this idea of making dance music that consists of liquid elements," says Snaith in a press release. "Rather than sounding metallic and rigid, everything is washing around you while you're listening to it - from one ear to another - but also the pitch is oscillating up and down, and each instrument is going in and out of tune with everything else. Sounds are emerging and disappearing, like everything is made out of water. Dance music is very much associated with very crisp, metallic, clean sounds. I like this idea of dance music that just washes around with fluidity."

You can hear what Snaith is talking about thanks to a free download of Caribou's first single from the album, called "Odessa". Guest vocalists on Swim include Born Ruffians' Luke Lalonde.

The Canadian Snaith, who has resettled in England, considers this latest Caribou endeavor the record he is "most proud of" and closest to his vision of how he wants to sound.

"I feel like I have my own vocabulary now," continues Snaith. "So much of contemporary music is soaked in referencing this or that. I wanted people to put the record on and not be able to say, 'this sounds like so- and-so.' I want people to say, 'this sounds like Dan!' It s what everybody wants - to have their fingerprint on the music they're making."

Snaith, working with a full band, begins an extensive North American tour beginning May 3 in Toronto, will reach New York May 7 and 8 with opening act Toro Y Moi on many of the dates.

Tragically echoing Vic Chesnutt's untimely death in December, Sparklehorse singer and songwriter Mark Linkous committed suicide on Saturday.

Linkous' publicist confirmed to Rolling Stone that the producer and musician had taken his own life and his family issued an official statement: “It is with great sadness that we share the news that our dear friend and family member, Mark Linkous, took his own life today. We are thankful for his time with us and will hold him forever in our hearts. May his journey be peaceful, happy and free. There’s a heaven and there’s a star for you.”

Sparklehorse released four albums, the most recent being 2006's Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain and according to the singer's publicist, Linkous had nearly completed a fifth Sparklehorse album which was slated to come out on Anti-. In addition to an album with electronic artist Christian Fennesz, which dropped last September, Linkous had also recently collaborated with Danger Mouse and director David Lynch on the long-unreleased project Dark Night of the Soul. After a long legal dispute with Danger Mouse's label EMI, that album was just approved for release this summer.

Linkous, who was in his 40s, had attempted suicide in the past and nearly died back in 1995. Like Chesnutt, who took an overdose of pills last December and died on Christmas Day, Linkous had long struggled with depression in his life, a condition that was gracefully, though darkly, reflected in his songs. Hauntingly, a splash page on Sparklehorse's own site had been displaying a photo of Chesnutt and a link to Kristin Hersh's Cash Music site to help raise money for that late singer's family.

Fresh adds to The Alternate Side's playlist include New Pornographers, Born Ruffians, We Were Promised Jetpack's new EP, Roky Erickson and Okkervil River ... and yes, the whipping return of Devo.

The Apples in Stereo- Travellers in Space and Time (Yep Roc/Simian/Elephant 6)

The Apples in Stereo's happily eccentric frontman Robert Schneider thought of a unique way of promoting the band's upcoming astro-pop album Travellers in Space and Time which drops April 20 on Yep Roc/Simian/Elephant 6. Make a video - a weird one - with Schneider and Elijah Wood (who owns Simian Records) opining on "Kitchen Khemistry" and making, um, music with a cucumber and an apple. The band kicks of a spring tour on April 16 in Lexington, Kentucky.

The mastermind behind LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy, has been a man divided over the last year. Between spending innumerable hours wrapping up LCD Soundsystem's third album (which seems to involve decadent escapades with his bandmates in a Los Angeles mansion), he's also been toiling on the soundtrack for the new Noah Baumbach film Greenberg. The film, which stars Ben Stiller as New Yorker wandering Los Angeles in the midst of a middle-age crisis, is in theatres on March 26. The soundtrack drops on March 23.

Pitchfork recently spoke to Murphy about his contribution to the soundtrack, an offering of seven new songs which divert dramatically what fans have come to expect from Murphy's LCD Soundsystem output. The admittedly work-overwhelmed Murphy says that his reasons for collaborating with Baumbach had much to do with the men's compatibility, noting that "he's not the biggest director in the world and I'm not the biggest band in the world, but we both have our own little worlds in which we get to be king, so we communicated really easily."

There is a particular, retro-pop sheen to the songs on Greenberg which might surprise Murphy's usual listeners. With visions of Harry Nilsson or Paul McCartney, circa 1973, in his head, Murphy set out to write songs evocative of that era.

"Noah and I had a good talk about not making a score but making songs," explained Murphy. "I tend to not like scores. I like old scores that are very specific but, typically, contemporary scores drive me crazy. It's the musical equivalent of a poetry slam-- just mood tones and spacey surround-sound shit. So I wrote a bunch of songs that are not directly about the movie but are like the songs that we would pick out of our record collections to illustrate the movie.

Murphy admits that his work on the Baumbach soundtrack delayed the progress on the new LCD Soundsystem record, but told Pitchfork that the album was on the brink of revised mastering. When asked it there were ready-made singles on the new album, Murphy said that "Drunk Girls" and "I Can Change" were the only songs that could remotely be considered "singles" for a label's purposes.

"Those are the only things they can use really; the album is nine songs and 65 minutes long, which is somewhat embarrassing," Murphy said. "'Drunk Girls' is about drunk people and fun things and the fact that all of the boys of the L.A. mansion we recorded at were called 'the girls' by our chef. We were the ladies of the mansion."

Murphy recently tweeted that the third LCD Soundsystem will be due out in May and that he and his bandmates had begun rehearsals for their upcoming tour, which thus far includes festival stops at Coachella, Bonnaroo and Pitchfork.

LCD Soundsystem 2010 Tour Dates

04-16 Indio, CA - Coachella

04-20 Dublin, Ireland - Tripod *

04-21 Dublin, Ireland - Tripod *

04-23 London, England - Brixton Academy *

04-24 London, England - Brixton Academy *

04-26 Birmingham, England - Academy *

04-27 Leeds, England - Academy *

04-28 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowlands *

04-29 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowlands *

05-01 Manchester, England - Academy

05-02 Bristol, England - Academy *

05-04 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso *

05-05 Brussels, Belgium - Ancienne Belgique *

05-06 Berlin, Germany - WMF *

05-08 Paris, France - Bataclan *

05-09 Paris, France - Bataclan *

05-30 George, WA - Sasquatch Festival

06-11 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo Festival

07-17 Chicago, IL - Pitchfork Music Festival

09-12 Isle of Wight, England - Bestival

At The Alternate Side, we're ardent advocates of legal downloading since no one likes to rip off a band. But we're in budget-conscious times, so finding cheap music can be a challenge. But this month, there are some great cool, legal ways you can find free or inexpensive music from Surfer Blood, Midlake, The Raveonettes, Manchester Orchestra, Passion Pit, Radiohead and many more:

Amazon:

100 Albums for $5

The music editors at Amazon compile a list of 100 albums (mp3 downloads only) for you to purchase for just $5. This month get Spoon's latest album Transference, Radiohead's album Kid A (Collector's Edition), The Postal Service's Give Up and many more. The best way to find out about these awesome deals is on Twitter.

Free Downloads:

Midlake, Adam Green, Zeus, The Raveonettes and more for free. That's right, free legal downloads. If you're on a tight budget, it doesn't get any cheaper.

Aimestreet

Tons of free downloads, mostly giving away the single of a new release. The pricing for the most part is cheaper than iTunes. Currently, they're giving away Surfer Blood's "Swim" from their new album Astro Coast and Tigercity "Fake Gold" from their album Ancient Lover. Visit AimeStreet.com.

iTunes:

Under $7 this month, you'll find Manchester Orchestra's latest album, Passion Pit's Chunk of Change EP, and Fleet Foxes' Sun Giant EP all for under 7 bucks... happy spending Visit iTunes for the albums under $7.