THE BLACK KEYS are profiled in the Wall Street Journal as they try to breakthrough to a wider audience with their upcoming Attack & Release album.  You can stream two advance tracks at 9bullets.  Or you can go to the laser tag-themed video for "Strange Times," via So Much Silence.

PARTNERS in RHYME: Top producer, soulful singer: it's a marriage made in heaven! But how well do Gnarls Barkley really know each other? Leonie Cooper turns an interview into a round of the Newlywed Game.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS visit WNYC's Soundcheck for a chat and mini-set, plus a reading from John Darnielle's book on Black Sabbath's 1971 masterpiece, Master of Reality.

THE REPLACEMENTS:  Licorice Pizza has posted a bootleg of the Mats' last show, played in Chicago's Grant Park on July 4, 1991.  You cans stream the sample track, "Swingin' Party," via the ol' HM.

ROBERT PLANT tops Canadian folk magazine Penguin Eggs' seventh annual critics poll.  "To anyone who has followed Plant's career of late, that's not as strange as it seems," said Penguin Eggs publisher, Roddy Campbell, of Plant's collaboration with bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss on their album, Raising Sand.

THE BEACH BOYS amicably settled a long legal dispute over rights to the band's name, possibly pave the way for a long-awaited reunion of the band's three surviving co-founders -- Brian Wilson, cousin Mike Love and Al Jardine -- as they approach their 50th anniversary.  It put me in the mood for Brian's solo version of "Heroes and Villains," plus a bootleg clip of Jardine joining Brian on "The Little Girl I Once Knew" from 2007.

SUPERGRASS tell The Scotsman how a little bit of wife-swapping and a near-death experience goes a long way.

THE NEW FRONTIERS do the four free songs thing for Daytrotter, three previously unreleased.

JENS LEKMAN:  Michaelangelo Matmos tells you five or six things he knows about the sardonic-romantic singer-songwriter from Gothenburg, Sweden.

R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe talks to Billboard about the upcoming album and the lead single, "Supernatural Superserious": "We all have our geek moments that we kind of carry with us or that have some impact on us throughout our lives (laughs). I hate to use the term 'geek anthem' but it's a little bit, for me, like that."

BRITNEY SPEARS's vocal recording secret is exposed by Henry Rollins.

JAMIE LYNN SPEARS, the pop wreck's 16-year-old knocked up sister, is seeking professional help for her emotional issues, according to the ever-reliable National Enquirer.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:  Horton Hears a Who? repeats as box office champ with 25.1 million; that's a 44 percent drop, comparable to the Ice Age franchise over Easter weekends.  Horton has grossed back its 85 million production budget and should end up plenty profitable. Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns was a strong second with 20 million on only only 2,006 screens.  Shutter came in a distant third with 10.7 million; maybe teens are tiring of Asian horror remakes.  Drillbit Taylor was close behind with 10.2 million, but given the an ultra-wide 3,056 screen release, one has to wonder if Judd Apatow is hitting a dry patch.  10,000 B.C had a better weekend than expected, amking 8.7 mill, dropping only 48 percent.  Vantage Point and The Bank Job held pretty well, while Under the Same Moon snuck into the Top Ten, with America Ferrara perhaps boosting it beyond a Hispanic audience.

BRADGELINA gave more than eight million dollars to charities through the Jolie Pitt Foundation in 2006.  The first year's filing show the foundation's expenses were a mere 27K.  The figure does not include Pitt's Make It Right Foundation, which is going to help build sustainable housing in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward -- and reportedly has raised an additional five million dollars.

SIENNA MILLER and RHYS IFANS are officially engaged, according to his mother.  The couple is alleged to be planning a summer wedding.

JAMIE LEE CURTIS has posed topless to mark her 50th birthday, for the cover of AARP magazine, to convince older women that they can still be beautiful if they take care of their bodies.

KATE BECKINSALE tells Moviefone that she would rather eat kitty than sushi -- or something like that, while noting that her publicist "has literally turned a funny color and is going to go have a lie-down..."

THE McCARTNEYS:  Hearther Mills wants to go back to the High Court, hoping to lift a gag order that prevents her going public on her doomed marriage to Sir Paul.  Mills will argue that a court order banning her from speaking about the proceedings, in which she won £24.3million, should be lifted because it leaves her with no right of reply.

JOE SIMPSON, Jessica & Ashlee's creepy dad-manager has been acting a lot like a single man and making an even bigger fool of himself.

THE JACKSONS:  Stiffed by their superstar brother Michael and plagued by decades of bad fiscal decisions, the once-mighty Jackson family is barely scraping by, with one brother stocking groceries, another repairing cars and others living at home with mom while hoping for sister Janet's next handout.

RYAN PHILLIPPE said nice things about Gyllenspoon and denied rumors of hook-ups with an array of famous women on The Howard Stern Show Thursday.  Meanwhile Reese Witherspoon was snapped buying piglets for their kids.

JOSS WHEDON has wrapped his latest project -- Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, an entirely independent made-for-Internet (but no word yet on where you'll find it) musical-comedy, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day.

GARY BUSEY, as I forgot to mention, apologized for his misguided attempt to garner attention by embracing Jennifer Garner at last month's Oscars.  Which is a good excuse to watch the incident again.

PEEPS:  What with being ill most of last week, I forgot to do a Peeps blurb for the Easter holiday -- all the more unforgivable once you know my Dad even e-mailed me about it.  But there are probably cheep Peeps in stores today, so here's a link to a Peeps gallery and to The Lord of the Peeps.

AFGHANISTAN:  There is increasing talk of a troop "surge" to reinvigorate the war effort against the Taliban and other extremist factions.  The US is now sending some 3200 Marines, but senior defense officials expect some announcements to come at next month's NATO summit in Bucharest, including a possible commitment by France to send as many as 700 additional troops.

IRAQ:  Shiite leaders warned followers in Friday prayers to brace for more violence following a gruesome attack by a female suicide bomber earlier in the week and continued clashes between Iraqi security forces and followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.  Renewed violence in Kut could test a cease-fire ordered by Sadr last August.  AQI has decided to enlist widows to carry out suicide bombings, according to a study by the Voices of Iraq news agency.  The US military said on Saturday it had hampered al Qaeda's ability to recruit new members in Iraq by capturing or killing many of the people who make slick videos used to attract disaffected young Muslims.

IRAQ PRE-WAR INTELL:  David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, tells Der Spiegel that the German intelligence service BND created the "biggest fiasco" in his career in intelligence by failing to do even the most basic vetting of their Curveball source before the Iraq war, and then lying about him to keep Americans from verifying his authenticity.

MALE MOOSE can hear for miles and miles.  So don't think they don't know about the little tricks you play.

BUNNY HOARDING:  Police removed 57 rabbits from a home in... wait for it.... Egg Harbor, NJ, after a raid revealed that many had soars, open wounds, tumors and lesions.  Just in time for Easter.

THEY CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA:  Huge sea snails, jellyfish with tentacles up to 4 meters (yards) long and starfish the size of big food platters were some of the species found during a major survey of New Zealand's Antarctic seas that ended last week.

ROGUE RATS savage woman on toilet.

A GOOSE passes for a swan under the Tamar Bridge in Plymouth, England.