Why on the 4th are the streets of Williamsburg empty? It's because all of the neighborhood's sweet young things have gone to the second day of this awesome backyard festival featuring The Oh Sees, the best band that San Francisco rocker John Dwyer has been in since the Coachwhips, Pink and Brown and The Hospitals.

FORMED JUST ABOUT a year ago from four very disparate corners of the Hip-Hop United States, Slaughterhouse brings the beastly lyrical pedigrees of its four component MCs (Jersey’s Joe Budden, Long Beach, Calif.’s Crooked I, Brooklynite Joell Ortiz and Detroit-bred Royce Da 5’9 ) to bear in aggressively straightforward rap music. Furthermore, it seeks to do nothing less than hotwire and run away with the rapidly flagging and disintegrating hiphop music industry, to poise itself as the harbinger of a new and prosperous golden age. Elevated goals to be sure, but in Slaughterhouse’s case, the “show and prove” seems to be a constant and breathless pursuit—all of the group’s initial output is swollen with lyrical blood and the members describe recording their forthcoming self-titled debut (out this week) in a tireless few days.

TWO TRACKS OF distorted crud hiss and grind against one another with a lo-fi hum. A high-pitched blast tears through static to produce foggy, wounded textures. Droning notes are strummed, tweaked and scratched into scorching frenzies, producing feedback that coils upon itself to create a ringing, impenetrable wail. Disfigured fragments lurch forward and ride out a full track-length by feeding off of the resonance of a couple of plucks.There are hints that typical musical implements create some of the art; the rest sounds like the work of possessed power tools.

WHEN ENERGIZED WITH a little ingenuity, idle hands can beget exciting digressions. Take the recent chronicles of Kelly Pratt, a songwriter most notable for manning horns in indie-rock outfits Arcade Fire and Beirut.While spending most of 2007 touring with one of those bands, Pratt racked up empty hours with little to pass the time.

Was I really going to return to Studio B? If you had told me before last weekend's Northside Festival that I'd ever visit that particular Greenpoint club seven times in four days, the final requiring both a hurried scurry up Wythe Avenue in the early a.m. and a semi-confident faith that Brooklyn's own reverb maestros Crystal Stilts wouldn't start on time.

Artist Dan Graham and The Feelies, the seminal rock band from New Jersey, have a couple things in common, but one of the main things is that theyve been around forever.The.

It’s been six years since Brody Dalle put out an album, but tonight the former Distillers frontwoman will hit the Bowery Ballroom with her new band Spinnerette. New York Press’ Rebecca Wallace spoke to Dalle about the new band, motherhood and Twitter.

It was never intended to be in Brooklyn, for Brooklyn, by Brooklyn, he says. Its not about celebrating Brooklyn artists exclusively. Its about everyone from the world coming to Brooklyn to celebrate.

Guy candy of the moment and a pretty good musician too, Mika plays his only American show of the summeran acoustic one to bootat (le) poisson rouge. Expect a heavily fashionable crowd and ponderous, dare I say haunting, ditties off his newly released album Songs For Sorrow.

Michael Angelakos may sing in a wild falsetto, but like Rush’s Geddy Lee and other pop-rock castrati before him, he has a perfectly normal speaking voice.