St Albans shoegaze trio Friendly Fires are to cover DFA signings Holy Ghost on their new single.
Friendly Fires have always blurred the edges between dance and rock. Initially lumped in with the ‘nu rave’ scene the St Albans trio have always had too much of an individual streak to sit easily in any pigeonhole.
With their [...]

BBC Radio 1 is to break with more than 40 years of tradition by broadcasting a midweek chart rundown for the first time.
The Official Chart Update will feature in a 30-minute slot in Greg James’s Radio 1 afternoon show, highlighting the biggest new entries and highest climbers in the top 40.
Radio 1’s Wednesday afternoon rundown, [...]

New York afrobeat-infused rockers ­Vampire Weekend were buoyant as they greeted fans in their home town this week. “This is a celebration for the new album,” yelled frontman Ezra Koenig. The celebrations ­continued ­yesterday as the band’s second ­album, Contra, went to No 1 in the US Billboard album chart, selling 124,000 copies in the [...]

This weekend, members of Radiohead, Pink Floyd, the Police and Elbow beat the drum for renewed diplomatic action in Sudan by, er, beating their drums. The bands’ drummers are all part of Beat for Peace, a campaign calling on leaders like Gordon Brown to “prevent all-out conflict [from] returning to Sudan” this year.
The initiative was [...]

Rage Against The Machine widened the gap over X Factor winner Joe McElderry in the battle for the Christmas number one, building up a lead of more than 60,000 sales.
The release, seen as an anti-X Factor protest vote by music fans, edged ahead of the show’s winner yesterday – and new figures show the lead [...]

Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello is set to donate his earnings from the ‘Killing In The Name’/X Factor Christmas Number One race to charity.
A fan-orchestrated campaign is urging people to download the 1992 track this week so it can stop the TV show winner Joe McElderry from reaching the top of the charts and [...]

The X Factor winner Joe McElderry is losing out to Rage Against The Machine in the race for the UK Christmas Number One single.
Early midweek indications today (December 15) are that McElderry’s single ‘The Climb’ (a cover of a song) has sold less than the US band, whose 1992 song ‘Killing In The Name’ is [...]

The odds for Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ to get to Number One spot ahead of this year’s X Factor winner, has dropped from 100-1 to 3-1.
The Facebook group which is urging members to download the song on December 13, has got bookmakers worried.
“The X Factor has had a monopoly over the [...]

Beyonce has scored her third straight No. 1 debut on the pop album chart with the double-disc “I Am … Sasha Fierce.”
The Music World/Columbia album shifted a whopping 482,000 copies in the United States during the week ended November 23, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The set, split between material credited to R&B star Beyonce and her [...]

Cheryl Cole has topped the UK Official Singles and Album Chart tonight (November 1).
The Girls Aloud singer has gone straight to Number One with her debut solo album ‘3 Words’, while ‘Fight For This Love’ spends a second week at the singles summit.
Other new singles entries include Westlife at Number Two with ‘What About Now’ [...]