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Brooklyn’s pop star artist Nathan Whipple dresses like an alien mummy and just might be one.

Chicago/Michigan/New York City trio Salem are so beautiful it hurts to listen to them.

…That is, big and pink. Comprised of one ex-Alec Empire beat maker and one brilliant record label entrepreneur (Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell, respectively),

San Diego’s Nathan Williams, as Wavves, is a surfed-out, stoned and dethroned breakthrough punk star… And we think we’re falling in lust with him.

The scowling super-cutie you’re looking at is none other than purportedly controversial rapper Trick Trick!  Wait, who? He’s a rapper from Detroit and a friend of Eminem who seems to be promoting a new album, The Villain, by targeting gays in his lyrics.

Progenitors of spaced out angst Deerhunter have a new double-disc LP to prove that everything they touch turns into a reverb-drenched golden shower.

Thanks largely to Matt Wolf’s emotionally groundbreaking documentary Wild Combination, the ghost of Arthur Russell has sprung up to equally haunt bedrooms, dancefloors, and desktops everywhere this Autumn.

Hercules and Love Affair have already become the reigning queens of gay dancefloors worldwide with their astonishingly appropriate debut album. But we bet you didn’t see this one coming.

Brazil’s brattiest band of babes have been touring exhaustively and churning out hit singles for the past two years. Our favorite, though, on their new album Donkey is all about getting revenge on that asshole who hurt you and doesn’t deserve to live.

Well, not exactly. We don’t picture our mom bopping her head to tribal, post-post-punk drums and the ethereal shrieks of Lizzi Bougatsos in the grocery store, but we’re ready to dance to it in our bedrooms and make our roommates mad.

You’ve got one week left to pack up your drug paraphernalia and lube, set the TiVO for Gossip Girl, and head down to Palm Springs to catch the Exposure Gallery’s Tom Bianchi exhibit:

Brooklyn’s Mirror Mirror (made up of live-in boyfriends David Riley and Ryan Lucero, drummer Matt Bagdanoff, and Jill Kaufman) recorded their full-length record in their Bushwick apartment, but it could have just as easily been piped in via space vessel from some roving, intergalactic commune.

Maybe we’re a little bit oversexed here at The Sword, or perhaps we’re just cynical… But is it just us, or is David Beckham wearing far too many clothes in these leaked images from his forthcoming 2009 wall calendar?

True, Becks is famous for more than just his bod (more=his wife, and soccer or whatever), but then why isn’t he kicking around a ball in any of these shots or glamorously embracing his dazzling spouse? Surely he doesn’t think we’re interested in his collection of purposely-frayed urban street wear. Thankfully, some of the garments are at least partially sheer, his arms are looking pretty good, and he’s showing off some newly expanded-upon facial hair. Could our beloved British boyfriend be a burgeoning bear-in-training? Hopefully when the summer shots are revealed we’ll be able to examine his chest hair follicles precisely and report back. In the meantime, shots of the over-styled soccer stud await.