• Eminem Unveils Trailer for “3 A.M.” Video
• Dylan’s Life On Pace for Number One
• Lil Wayne’s “Fix My Hat” Hits the Web
• No Doubt “Giddy” for Tour, Album
• Lambert Gets a Scare, Giraud Nixed From Idol
• News Ticker: Killers, Steven Tyler
• Swine Flu to M.I.A.: “We Need You”
• The New Issue: Bob Dylan’s America
• Sasha Grey: Porn’s Dirtiest Girl in RS
• Paramore Tackle Friendship on September LP
• Creed Fans React to Reunion News
• Spears Team Wins Restraining Order Fight
• Rick Ross Scores Third Number One
• Live at Rolling Stone: Ida Maria
• Breaking: Paper Route
• Oasis Rock in a Bathroom for (Red)Wire
• New Music Report: The Thermals
• Dylan on Working With Robert Hunter for LP
• Lil Wayne’s Team Compare Rebirth to OutKast
• Pearl Jam, Beasties, DMB Lead ACL Lineup
• Street Sweeper Social Club Posts Song
• Wilco Name LP Wilco (The Album)
• J Dilla: Best Posthumous Rap Album Ever
• Scott Stapp Speaks Out on Creed Reunion

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

Photo: Desmond / The CW

With No Doubt set to reunite with a pair of concerts this weekend, Gwen Stefani and bassist Tony Kanal sat down with MTV to discuss the often-overlooked subplot of their first tour in five years: To work on a new album, penciled in for a 2010 release. “We’re calling it ‘the procrastination tour’ … well, I am, at least. I’m the biggest procrastinator,” Gwen Stefani told MTV. “It’s not their fault, it’s my fault, because I had this whole game plan: ‘OK, I’m gonna go on tour with my last record, I’m gonna come home, I’m gonna get pregnant, I’m gonna have a baby, but while I’m pregnant, I’m gonna make the No Doubt record.’ That was, like, the plan, but it all didn’t work.”

With the band struggling to craft new songs, No Doubt’s drummer Adrian Young admitted that the album wouldn’t be ready by 2009. As Stefani said on the band’s Website in November 2008, “I think if we go out on tour it will inspire us to write. I need to see the fans out there.” “You know, it all made sense. We were in the studio, trying to write. Things weren’t coming,” Kanal told MTV. “Gwen was feeling like she couldn’t find the place where she wanted to start the writing process. I think she always goes through this and I think we just need to find ourselves. We just need to get out on the road.” (more…)

Every week, Hype Monitor wades through the most buzzed-about bands all across the Internet to find the ones you need to hear now.

The Band: Finale
The Buzz: Detroit rapper tells his life story against a backdrop of hazy R&B and scuffed-up soul.
Listen If: You’re just as exhausted with Flo Rida as we are.
Key Track: “A Pipe Dream and a Promise,” where Finale nimbly spells out his mantra as a lonesome trumpet lows in the distance.

The Band: Electric Owls
The Buzz: Ex-Comas frontman writes songs that pair heartwrenching howls with cascading keys and breathless acoustic strums — arid and engaging. (more…)

Photo: Winter/Getty

“Fix My Hat,” another track from Lil Wayne’s Rebirth, has hit the Web. Described as “an homage to vintage Beastie Boys” in our Spring Music Preview, the 808-soaked song is devoid of the nu-metal guitars and Auto-Tune we’ve come to expect from Rebirth’s previous singles “Prom Queen” and “Hot Revolver.” In fact, “Fix My Hat” sounds like it would fit more comfortably on Run-DMC’s beat-heavy Raising Hell than their own heavy metal-tinged LP King of Rock. Get the goods over at Nah Right.

As Rock Daily reported earlier this week, Rebirth producer Dre of Cool & Dre told MTV, “There’s some rock records on there, but there’s also some records where he’s rapping. It’s a Lil Wayne album. It’s what you expect from Lil Wayne, where he’s at creatively.” “Fix My Hat” fits into the “where he’s rapping” category, with Weezy spitting straight rhymes before launching into a chorus that alternates between “Let me fix my hat” and “Let me fix my gat.” According to Nah Right, the track was produced by Spliffington Management’s Drew Money, a.k.a. Pro V, who previously served as engineer on songs like Jay-Z’s “Hello Brooklyn 2.0″ and Chris Brown & Kanye West’s “Down.” (more…)

After just two days on sale, Rolling Stone cover artist Bob Dylan’s latest album Together Through Life is already on pace to top next week’s sales charts, Billboard reports. Together Through Life will likely finish the week with sales upward of 100,000, but will be hard-pressed to match the 192,000 copies Modern Times sold in its debut week in 2006. The LP would mark the fifth time Dylan has landed a Number One album.

According to Billboard, Dylan’s first chart-topper in America was 1974’s collaboration with the Band, Planet Waves. Number Ones for 1975’s Blood on the Tracks and 1976’s Desire quickly followed, and 30 years later Dylan accomplished the feat again with Modern Times. Dylan’s last official non-album release, Tell Tale Signs, debuted at Number Six in October 2008. (more…)

Photo: Winter/Getty

• In a new NME interview, the Killers’ Brandon Flowers complained that American audiences haven’t embraced the band like Europeans have. “[In America], people are still so obsessed with Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, those sorts of bands, that nobody else is allowed [to grow],” Flowers reportedly said. “It’s not just us; there are a lot of great bands that have been held down or confined by the influence of these people that we’ve put up on pedestals. I’m tired of it, you know? I just want to knock them all off!”

• Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and E Street band saxophonist Clarence Clemons will help open this year’s BookExpo America in New York City on May 28th. Tyler, who penned his own autobiography Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?, will be interviewed by writer Chuck Klosterman at the event, Live Daily reports.
• Vern Gosdin, nicknamed “The Voice” of country music, died April 27th after recently suffering a stroke, Billboard reports. He was 74. Gosdin penned hits like “I Can Tell By the Way You Dance,” “Set ‘Em Up Joe” and “Chiseled in Stone,” which won the CMA Song of the Year Award in 1988. Gosdin was also in the band Golden State Boys, which featured the Byrds’ Chris Hillman.

Do potential pandemics need a musical response? M.I.A. de-stigmatized Bird Flu with her clacking track named after the 2004 global scare (Sample lyrics: “Bird flu gonna get you made it in my stable/from the crap you drop on my crop when they pay you”). When she posted the tune on YouTube in 2007, M.I.A. noted the song was so-named because “THIS BEAT GON KILL EVERYONE!!” But is it too soon for the new mom to whip up a beat for H1N1? (”Bird Flu” followed the actual deadly disease three years later). Rock Daily says yes, but the world says no (and evidently so does M.I.A., who actually Twittered, “Recording Swine Flu” — plus, the virus already has sonic competition:

This morning CNN reported on Stephan Zielinski, a California blogger/programmer who took the genetic sequence of one of the proteins in Swine Flu and fed it into a computer algorithm to turn it into a song. Zielinski told CNN it took approximately six hours to equate each kind of amino acid with an instrument (hear the song, a slow ambient piece, on Zielinski’s site). (more…)

Eminem took to his Twitter this morning to introduce fans to the bloody new trailer for his new Relapse single, “3 a.m.” The song is a gruesome serial killer tale, and the video trailer is a mini horror movie; the full clip, which was directed by Syndrome, will debut on HBO’s sister movie channel Cinemax this Saturday, May 2nd, at 10 p.m.

Based on the trailer, “3 a.m.” will be the polar opposite of the campy “We Made You” video, which makes sense considering the new song’s gory lyrics: “I remember the first time I dismembered a family member, December.” The trailer is eerily reminiscent to the visuals of the VHS tape that killed people in The Ring, consisting of a series of images that combine into a terrifying montage: A nurse wheels a cart down the hallway of an abandoned mental hospital, Eminem sits naked in a room and runs through the woods, corpses, scribbled notebooks and finally, Slim Shady with a butcher knife standing behind a security guard as blood literally climbs up the wall a la The Shining. (more…)

Adam Lambert made his first-ever appearance in the bottom three on last night’s American Idol results show, but ultimately once-saved Matt Giraud was pushed out the door as the Season Eight field narrowed to four. The episode began with a bright note — a Ford commercial featuring the Apples in Stereo’s perky “Energy” (last week the crew sang a Lykke Li song, begging the question, Who on the Idol staff likes quirky indie pop? We won’t hold our breath for the “Aeroplane Over the Sea” cover). And for once the group number had more juice than the star performances: the five remaining hopefuls made a tight quintet, ably handling “It Don’t Mean a Thing” and “I’ve Got Rhythm.” (Re-live Tuesday night here.)

But before long, things went wrong: we were subjected to a silly clip of the Top Five food-fighting while baking a cake, and Ryan Seacrest presented worst-offender Danny Gokey with a $6,000 cleaning bill (hey, whatever happened to Idol Gives Back, by the way? Or has world hunger diminished during the recession…). (more…)

Photo: Shearer/WireImage

Alice Cooper invites you to be his Frankenstein as he terrorizes Fairgrounds this August, plus Blue October set out in support of Approaching Normal and producers Diplo & Switch go from behind the studio console to in front of an audience with Major Lazer. Full dates for all three treks after the jump. (more…)

Norway’s hottest punk-rock export and Breaking artist Ida Maria recently popped by the Rolling Stone studios to perform four songs and tell Rock Daily about the stories behind a handful of tracks off her acclaimed debut, Fortress Round My Heart. In our first installment of Ida, she presents stripped-down, acoustic versions of two of her biggest singles, “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked” (above) and “Keep Me Warm” (after the jump).

” ‘Keep Me Warm’ and ‘Naked’ are both about love,” Maria tells Rolling Stone. “But ‘Keep Me Warm’ is more about friendship.” But even love songs sound tough in Maria’s Nico-meets-Chrissie Hynde voice, and tales of drunken nights and one-night stands pepper her lyrics. “I had been writing songs for three days and I didn’t bother to get dressed or shower, I was just sitting there in my underwear with a guitar. That was how I came up with it,” she says of writing “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked. (Watch the song’s official video here.) (more…)

Photo: Cowart/WireImage

A Los Angeles judge instructed Britney Spears‘ former manager Sam Lutfi and lawyer Jon Eardley not to contact, threaten or act on behalf of the pop star until 2012, according to the AP. As Rock Daily previously reported, the two men, along with Spears’ paparazzo ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, were accused of attempting to overturn Jamie Spears’ conservatorship over his daughter. That legal agreement grants Jamie control of Britney’s finances as well as legal and business decisions; it stems from Spears’ breakdown in January 2008, which led to the singer being hospitalized twice and losing primary custody of her two sons.

(Track Britney’s rise, fall and comeback, in photos.)

During testimony in this case, the judge heard an alleged voicemail from Spears in which she asks for help, but Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aviva K. Bobb ultimately sided with Jamie Spears. “Never before in the history of the world has a restraining order been issued against someone who merely responded to cries for help,” Lutfi’s lawyer Bryan Freedman said. Spears’ attorney Joel Boxer admitted that the restraining order request was “unusual,” but argued it was necessary in order to protect the Cirus singer from “people who I think are fairly characterized as predators.” (more…)

Photograph by Theo Wenner

Sasha Grey is the adult industry’s reigning princess of porn, a rock & roll 21-year-old with an actual mission statement — “Most of the XXX I see is boring, and does not arouse me physically or visually. I am determined and ready to be a commodity that fulfills everyone’s fantasies” — and few taboos. Rolling Stone’s Vanessa Grigoriadis jumped into Grey’s wild world for a profile in the new issue, and describes the Kate Beckinsale lookalike as “the smartest person I’ve ever met in that industry” (Grigoriadis has previously visited porn sets to profile XXX goddesses like Jenna Jameson).

(Exclusive photos: porn’s dirtiest girl poses for Rolling Stone)

Though the pornography biz has been reshaped by the recession and the digital age, Grey has managed to make the jump from bondage flicks on the ‘Net to a Steven Soderbergh film at the Tribeca Film Festival. But as Grigoriadis quickly learned, Grey is far from a typical porn star. She’s co-managed by Dave Navarro, pals with Billy Corgan and cites French director Jean-Luc Godard in everyday conversation. While most porn actresses would jump at the chance to get naked on the Howard Stern Show, Sasha wants to appear on the shock jock’s program with a Palestinian flag wrapped around her breasts to confront the man she believes is a closet racist. (more…)

Photo: Jeremy Cowart

Who: Electro-rock quartet Paper Route, who caught the eye of fellow Nashville band Paramore and the music directors at One Tree Hill and are making their major-label debut this week with Absence. With their heart-wrenching, lush and moody arrangements, Paper Route don’t exactly define the sound of their city: “We tend to be the black sheep in Nashville,” programmer/keyboardist Chad Howat says, “but we love it here.”

Sounds Like: Melodic, emotional synth-rock that pulses with an ambient undercurrent reminiscent of vintage Boards of Canada or Aphex Twin. Paper Route are America’s answer to symphonic-pop artists like Elbow, M83 and Air, especially on Absence tracks like the propulsive “Tiger Teeth” and anthemic, Doves-like “Last Time.”

Vital Stats:

• Howat, who has spied fellow Nashville resident Jack White everywhere from the Home Depot to cheeseburger joints, had an almost-fatal run-in with another of the city’s biggest stars. (more…)

If you want Oasis’ Noel Gallagher to rock in a bathroom, evidently all you have to do is ask nicely. The singer-guitarist performed a version of the band’s “Waiting for the Rapture” (see partial clip, above) in the loo at New York’s Madison Square Garden for (Red)Wire, the download service aligned with Bono’s (Product)Red campaign, which raises money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. (Red)Wire, which went live in December 2008, delivers subscribers one weekly download for $5 per month. This week’s issue includes the Oasis tune plus Metric’s “Gimme Sympathy” from their new album Fantasies.