I realized something today. I have been updating this blog for nearly four months now and I haven’t once mentioned She & Him, the folksy, country-pop duo featuring Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward.

For most of you, this revelation might not seem particularly unusual or even notable.

But to anyone who has ever had a conversation with me that has lasted longer than five minutes, this is nothing short of a miracle. 

This is because for the past seven years, I have had a deeply unhealthy obsession for an innocent charming crush on the charismatic Zooey.

Merge just released a 7” single for “Thieves,” the second single off their latest album, Volume Two.

The single also contains the never released before b-side, “I Knew It Would Happen This Way”, which you can download illegally for free here.

Last month the duo released the music video for “Thieves” , which is directed by Norwood Cheek, who has also created some interesting music videos for Superchunk, Ben Folds Five and French Kicks.

Filmed entirely in black and white, the video features both current and child versions of Zooey and Matt.

In a fantastical display of bending the space-time continuum, Zooey Jr. and Matt Jr. transfer objects to their adult counterparts, which is not entirely unlike the Back to the Future trilogy, or Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure if you prefer (but you would be an asshole in the wrong if you did).

I once knew this kid back in grade 6 who fainted during English class after reading some gory description in a Stephen King novel.

Perhaps this kid was more sensitive to violence than the average bear… or maybe he just wasn’t desensitized to it like the rest of us.

In any case, this kid (who I suppose is now an adult unless he discovered a non-aging serum and is forever a 12-year-old boy) would definitely lose his shit after viewing just 7 seconds of the new Flaming Lips video for “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine”.

Like The Lips’ previous music video for “Powerless”, this NSFW video for the third single off last year’s Embryonic has some deeply disturbing scenes of torture that are not for the faint of heart.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Tim Roth’s ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs comes to mind here.

Throw in a maniacal monkey and a giant fur-ball with a vagina that “swallows” art (I couldn’t make this shit up even if I tried) and you’ve got another mind-fuck of a Lips video.

The Flaming Lips play Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre with Spoon and Tokyo Police Club on July 8th.

[Via P4k TV]

You know that Telus is really running out of cute baby animals to feature in their commercials when they’re using non-descript white birds.

Actually, this is just the teaser trailer for the new Ratatat single, “Party With Children” (I could easily make some kind of pedophile joke here but I won’t) from their forthcoming album, LP4.

Much like Telus commercials, a lot of people consider the Brooklyn duo a one-trick pony. After all, there’s probably only a finite number of things you can do in the realm of instrumental beats performed by guitar loops, synths and a laptop.

That said, I’ve always loved what these guys do, particularly within the context of their live show. LP4 picks up where the last album left off, quite literally, as the batch of 12 songs are mostly taken from the same recording sessions that spawned LP3.

You can hear the album in its entirety thanks to the good folks at NPR, who are streaming it well before its June 8th release date.

At first listen, the album seems grittier and more heavy on exotic percussion than its predecessor. It’s almost as though they borrowed the backbone of Justice (ironically enough, Justice’s “Phantom Pt. II” was used in a Telus ad a couple years ago).

Last June, Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch released God Help The Girl project, which featured songs he wrote for his yet-to-be-released musical film, which is set to shoot sometime in 2011.

With a revolving cast of mostly female vocalists, which included Catherine Ireton, Smoosh’s Asya, Brittany Stallings, Dina Bankole, Celia Garcia and Alex Klobouk, God Help The Girl still felt very Belle and Sebastian in both lyrics, melody and instrumentation.

But any insights into the going-on’s of the musical itself were few and far between, as Murdoch’s lyrics seemed more focused on imagery than plot points.

Rough Trade has just released the album’s third single/video, “Baby You’re Blind”, which features Linnea Jönsson of Sweden’s Those Dancing Days.

The 7” features a new version of “A Down and Dusky Blonde” with lead vocals by Dina Bankole.

And more great news for B&S fans: the band is working on their official follow-up to 2006’s The Life Pursuit”, and will tour throughout Europe, Asia, USA, Mexico, and yes, Canada, this year. Tour dates will be announced soon.

Belle and Sebastian made this announcement Tuesday on their website:

With more shows being added all the time, we thought it timely to offer an update on this year’s touring calendar. It’s beginning to look like a pretty busy year and we still have more shows up our sleeve…

For various reasons we cannot announce all the shows at the one time, but (all going to plan) in addition to these listed below we will be squeezing in shows in Canada, Mexico and the USA as well as a trip to South America between now and the end of the year. Of course we will also have some more European festivals and a few UK shows to announce later in the year too…

The video for “Spanish Sahara”, the lead single off Foals’ sophomore album, Total Life Forever, made its online debut March 2nd, which in blog years is roughly equal to 270 years ago.

It would be like if we were at Urban Outfitters and I asked, “did you hear Handel’s new joint, Messiah? That shit’s the bomb!” (Ironically enough, referring to anything as “the bomb” is as dated as Handel’s Messiah.)

In any case, maybe a handful of you haven’t see this video, which gives me enough of a reason to post this haunting yet beautiful epic.

Total Life Forever is out May 11th on Sub Pop.