Not that they take themselves too seriously or anything, but Enigma have placed a countdown clock on their website, enigmaspace.com, in anticipation of their new album, 'Seven Lives, Many Faces.' Before you soil yourself with excitement, don't believe the hype: the clock is for the European release from this German giant. Americans will have to wait eleven additional days -- to September 30 -- to get their hands on a copy.

In the album's press release, Enigma's Michael Cretu hints that the album, which was drafted from his digital archive of 400,000-plus sounds, is partially a cross-breed of symphonic string arrangements with driving hip-hop beats.

Never one for pretension, Cretu says, "The idea behind Enigma is to make the impossible, possible." They should probably start with more accurate, geographically-minded countdown clocks (which, by the way, is totally possible).

Bassist and founding member of the Dead Kennedys, Klaus Flouride, is taking a leave of absence from his institutional hardcore punk band due to a medical condition called Angioedema. "I'm not leaving the Dead Kennedys so much as, right now, I can't perform with the Dead Kennedys for the foreseeable future," Flouride tells Spinner. "And it's nothing to do with personal stuff or anything like that."

While on tour with the Kennedys, Flouride's face would break out in hives. "Sometimes I can look like Homer Simpson, sometimes I can look like John McCain," he jokes. "It's really neat. If only I could make it happen at will."

For then-drummer Darren Jessee, the breakup of his band Ben Folds Five in 2000 provided him an opportunity at the time to catch up living life and enjoy his new home of New York City.

"I basically took my time," he tells Spinner, "and started writing songs that I cared about. I just needed to find myself in some kind of way. Somehow it turned into a full-fledged project."

Thus began Jessee's new band Hotel Lights, which put out its self-titled debut in 2005. The group's second album 'Firecracker People,' was released this week and features Jessee's lead vocals, acoustic guitar and songs. The new album's atmospheric, subdued and sometimes melancholic sound is a departure from the rock music of his former North Carolina-based band.

"That's just how I've always kind of worked," he says. "Ben [Folds] was the primary songwriter for that other band. So I think that's the big difference. This sound of Hotel Lights is something I've been doing since about 2000, just kind of refining it and working on it."

Santa Cruz-based Sound Tribe Sector Nine (STS9) have always done things a little differently. (See: once touring according to the Mayan calendar and later, inviting artists of all kinds -- painters, writers, flower-arrangers -- onstage with them.) A favorite act at festivals like Bonnaroo and Rothbury, the instrumental trance-rock band's latest album, 'Peaceblaster,' is their most accessible album yet. "It's our Polaroid of America right now," bassist Dave Murphy tells Spinner. "It's a beautiful place. We live a peaceful lifestyle here, but there's also a real dark underbelly to it. It's reflected in the name, in the music, in the message and we felt like we really hit home this time."

And yet, 'Peaceblaster' might be the last CD the band ever releases. By traditional means, anyway. "For one, music has moved into a day and age when people are going to quit listening on CD players, so therefore the CD is an obsolete product if you will," Murphy explains. Additionally, for a band so environmentally conscious, it makes no sense to use all the resources it takes "to put out a CD and manufacture all that product to put out there when people aren't really buying that medium anymore."

U2 should already know that a rattle and hum can grow into a roar heard 'round the world, but frontman Bono got a reminder this week while listening to new U2 tracks in his French vacation home.

A fan overheard the music and thought to record it on his makeshift bootlegging equipment: his cell phone. Predictably, the four tracks he managed to capture were instantly uploaded on YouTube. Although they've since been removed for obvious reasons, it's too late -- the cat is out of the bag and four new U2 tracks are making the rounds. The quality is, as the Irish might say, "piss poor," but in a way that only gives it a certain bootleg charm.

And that, dear friends, is how a leak is born.

Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore, one of the band's founding members, died on Tuesday afternoon after struggling with injuries from a June 30 ATV accident. He was 46.

"Moore had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program," a spokesperson for the Dave Matthews Band said. The ATV accident occurred on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia, the city where DMB originally formed in 1991 with Moore, singer/guitarist Dave Matthews and drummer Carter Beauford.

In the days following his accident, Jeff Coffin (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) had been substituting for the fallen saxophonist. In July, Coffin told Spinner that he was just a temporary replacement until Moore could perform with the band again. "They're such a strong band," he said. "I'm just trying to do my thing in their river and really play a supportive role." Coffin performed with the band, as scheduled, at a DMB concert on Tuesday night following word of Moore's death.

The statement from the band spokesperson says that, despite his injuries, Moore's death came "unexpectedly." Read the full story.

One of the most expensive places to live in the Bay Area (and just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco), Marin County has always been a refuge for rock stars who have made it big, have lots of dough and wish to escape the city. At the same time, the county still carries many of the hippie ideals first imported to it from San Francisco's Summer of Love era.

Enter Sandman, err, James Hetfield. The Metallica frontman has long owned a 500-acre property in the area and, since then, also acquired an adjacent ranch. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Hetfield made plans to build a 14,000-square-foot house, a 6,000-square foot studio and additional installations. While building hasn't commenced, the property does overlap with a public trail popular with hikers, bicyclers and equestrians.

Hetfield -- whose albums with Metallica include titles such as 'Kill 'Em All' and 'St. Anger' -- recently erected a tall and impenetrable metal fence (complete with barbed wire), preventing use of the otherwise public trail. Recreational traversers are angry, to say the least. While city officials recognize his rights as property owner, they're hoping to work out a deal with him that would allow access to the trail while still keeping the rest of his property closed off. To bite another Metallica title, doing so could conceivably, um, create justice for all.

Brazilian dance rockers Cansei Ser Sexy, or CSS as most people call them, have been having one heck of a summer. In addition to a host of festival stops around the world, including the Reading and Leeds festivals in the UK this coming weekend, the outfit just dropped their second album, 'Donkey,' on their Sub Pop home.

The effort, according to guitarist and sometime drummer Luiza Sa -- the lone member of the group to base herself in New York City -- was written on tour as the band promoted their self-titled, 2006 debut release. "Everyone is different about creativity," Sa tells Spinner. "Everyone needs a different creative environment and Adriano [Cintra, the group's multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter] -- he's done music for like 15 years. He's such a work-aholic and he doesn't mind anything. Writing for him was kind of a survival thing. When bad times came, he was just writing and writing more, which is very positive."

Despite the bad times, the album is as poppy as its predecessor thanks to songs like 'Jager Yoga,' with its angular bass guitar lines and deep bass grooves. And the album's title -- 'Donkey,' gives the record a fun twist too, with its name coming from their friend -- a Brazilian-to-Los-Angeles transplant with a diverse vocabulary.

Sometimes the rock 'n' roll lifestyle isn't all that exciting but rather a series of traveling from city to city marked by periods of downtime. It's something that Nick Zinner knows firsthand over the years as the guitarist for the alternative rock group Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He's capturing those experiences through his other passion: photography.

"It's a great way to explore where you're at," he tells Spinner. "Also it's kind of [documenting] all the small moments that you wouldn't really notice or remember because it all really blurs into one haze."

Zinner's pieces have been exhibited in different places, and in 2005 he published a book of his photography, 'I Hope You Are All Happy Now.' His latest photo show, 'It's OK, Don't Look at the Road,' which just opened at New York City's Fuse Gallery and runs through September 13, contains images taken from his experiences.

The Godfather of Grunge, hippie icon and anti-corporate hero Neil Young will hit the road this fall for a North American tour, backed by the same band he took with him to Europe earlier this year. Perhaps trying to match some of his eclectic but wildly successful line-ups from years past (Sonic Youth and Social Distortion come to mind), Young will bring rising upstarts Everest with him for the entire tour, while Death Cab for Cutie and Wilco will each tackle half the run. The tour begins on October 14 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and ends at NYC's Madison Square Garden on December 15.

Another great idea: general admission floor seating (with reserved in the stands). We love that.

"I'm sure Johnny Cash would have been a John McCain supporter if he was still around."

Those are words country star John Rich may want to take back. Cash's eldest daughter, Rosanne Cash, has issued a statement in response to Rich's political assumption, which he made onstage at a Florida concert earlier this month.

"It is appalling to me that people still want to invoke my father's name, five years after his death, to ascribe beliefs, ideals, values and loyalties to him that cannot possibly be determined and to try to further their own agendas by doing so," Rosanne writes. "I knew my father pretty well, at least better than some of those who entitle themselves to his legacy and his supposed ideals, and even I would not presume to say publicly what I 'know' he thought or felt. This is especially dangerous in the case of political affiliation. It is unfair and presumptuous to use him to bolster any platform. I would ask that my father not be co-opted in this election for either side since he is clearly not here to defend or state his own allegiance."

Let's hear it for the boys. The Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers are teaming up for a nationwide tour called 'Rock 'n' Roll Means Well.' Taken from a line from the Drive By Trucker's 2003 album 'Decoration Day,' the full lyric is one of the Hold Steady's Craig Finn's favorites: "rock 'n' roll means well but can't help telling young boys lies."

The cross-admiration between the two bands will be apparent on the co-headlining tour itself, as they take turns with who goes last. Such gentlemen. The tour begins on October 30. In the meantime, check out the Hold Steady on Conan O'Brian on August 25.

Despite recent revelations that she's never actually kissed a girl, Katy Perry has disgusted her parents just the same. While the contagious, bi-curious chart topper, 'I Kissed a Girl' has earned the singer rightful claim to the one of the summer's biggest hits, her mother, evangelical preacher Mary Hudson, says she hates the pop song.

Hudson told the Daily Mail that the single "promotes sin" and says she's praying for her daughter's salvation. "It clearly promotes homosexuality and its message is shameful and disgusting," Perry's mom says. "I can't even listen to that song. The first time I heard it I was in total shock. When it comes on the radio I bow my head and pray. Katy is our daughter and we love her but we strongly disagree with how she is conducting herself at the moment. Katy is not a homosexual but I fear she has been led astray by the Hollywood crowd. I spoke to her only recently. She said, 'Oh Mom, I'm not going to turn into Amy Winehouse.'"

Hudson can count her blessings for that.

Bay Area native Les Claypool doesn't have any plans etched in stone when it comes to Primus' performance at the first annual Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco. However, he does know one thing: "There will be astronauts involved," he said at a press conference. "I think we might play songs from Van Halen 'One,'" he joked.

Although they haven't exactly been performing Van Halen albums in their entirety, as threatened, the Primus fellas have actually been accompanied by giant inflatable astronauts as of late. "The astronauts are glorious," Claypool said, noting that they had them in tow this past June for Quebec City's 400th Anniversary Celebration. "I think it was touching for them to have an element of NASA and space at their celebration." Canada, of course, has never had a space exploration program to call their own (although some could make an argument involving Neil Young). Acknowledging this, Claypool said, "It could have been puzzling for them being that we were there to celebrate 400 years of Quebec City and we show up with ... 'In your face, Quebec!'"

Given all the space cadets in San Francisco, we predict Primus, at Outside Lands, will be a hit.

Jerry Wexler, the man who literally gave R&B its name along with giving the world many of music's greatest stars, has died at his home in Florida at age 91. The New York native, in his role as Atlantic Records producer and co-chairman from the '50s through the '70s, is responsible for furthering the careers of many of the giants of rock and soul music, from Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin to Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers Band.

Read Rolling Stone's extensive tribute to Wexler's storied life and indelible contributions to music.