IRON & WINE: "Godless Brother in Love" dropped in October, but is getting unexpected blog love now.

THE CIVIL WARS play a session at Laundro-Matinee, including a cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean."

YO LA TENGO: NYC Taper has not one, but two of the band's Hanukkah shows at Maxwell's. (Thx, Chromewaves.)

DUM DUM GIRLS play Morning Becomes Eclectic in this turn-of-year encore link.

PEARL JAM: The previously unreleased demo, "Chinese," thanks to Cameron Crowe.

CURSIVE drops "The Sun and Moon" in advance of I Am Gemini.

SAD BABY WOLF, a Shins side project, drops "8th Level."

R.E.M. covers ABBA's "Does Your Mother Know?", circa 1984.

THUNDERCLAP NEWMAN: Because there's "Something In The Air." And you know that it's right.

THE PITCHFORK READERS' POLL: Best Albums, along with the Underrated and Overrated (many of the latter are also Best Albums).

KATHLEEN EDWARDS talks to Salon about her upcoming Voyageur and her music evolution while staying at her parents' tranquil farmhouse about four hours from Toronto.

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN: Ithsmus alerts me to a fabulous post by David Lowery about hitmaking and "Take the Skinheads Bowling" I missed in July.

MUSIC SALES were up by a whopping one percent in 2011, according to preliminary figures.

THE DRUMS frontman Jonathan Pierce chats to FasterLouder about inner-band tensions, getting away from that ‘surf band' tag, and dropping the song that helped them hit the big time. (Thx, LHB.)

BREAKOUT ARTISTS of 2012, according to PopMatters.

BRADGELINA: Jolie bought Pitt a waterfall; he plans to build a house over it with the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff. The pair visited  Lloyd Wright's 1939 masterpiece Fallingwater, which was built in Pennsylvania on a similar piece of land, in 2006 (when the above pic was taken).

LINDSAY LOHAN is ramping up security after asome random dude turned up on her doorstep.

DEMI MOORE & ADAM BRODY will play Gloria Steinem and Harry Reems in the Linda Lovelace biopic.

EWAN McGREGOR chatted with GQ about Haywire, fatherhood, fantasies, and the other three movies he's in this year.

DAVID TENNANT tied the knot with fiancée Georgia Moffett; they met on the set of Doctor Who.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK's opening sequence, recreated with old movie footage.

ROGER EBERT's theories about declining box office receipts.

MOROCCO has a new, Islamist-led government.

IRAN test fired "long-range" shore-to-sea and surface-to-surface missiles.

AFGHANISTAN: A delegation of the Hezb-i-Islami of Afghanistan (HIA) led by former jihadi leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, held "beneficial" talks with Afghan government officials, an HIA member said on Tuesday.

IRAQ:  Looking to step back from the brink, Iraq's fractious political blocs are working on short-term solutions to cool a crisis that threatened a slide back into sectarian strife, but fundamental differences may be left to smolder.

A DOG eats in her chair.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Thousands of dead herring on a beach in Norway.

HYBRID SHARKS discovered Down Under.

PIG RACING: A high-stakes world, some of it in bridal wear.