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Christian Hoard’s “Christian Rock” new music pick this week is Kate Nash’s My Best Friend Is You. The 22-year-old British singer’s 2008 album went platinum in the U.K. and showed off her cockney accent, witty piano pop and general English cheekiness. The new album is more expansive, confident and simply better. Nash is a tuneful hurricane of TMI, flipping between insecurity and chutzpah as she sings about stinky feet and threatens to do bad things to a boyfriend if he makes out with another woman. On one of Hoard’s favorite tracks, “I Just Love You More,” Nash tries out a heavy PJ Harvey vibe. Though she gets compared to Lily Allen, Nash doesn’t make political statements like Allen did on her most recent disc, and seems kookier in general. Hoard argues Best Friend may be the most tuneful album we get from the U.K. this year.

To read Nash’s take on making the record check out Kate Nash Talks My Best Friend Is You.

• Big Boi tells the BBC info on OutKast’s upcoming music is “top secret” but allows “something is brewing.” Andre 3000 produces a “crazy, bananas” track on his colleague’s solo disc, Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty.

• Satellite radio company Sirius XM added 171,000 new listeners in the first quarter of 2010, according to the Hollywood Reporter, bringing its grand total to 18.9 million subscribers.
• Cali rapper Game is returning on June 15th with R.E.D. Album, a new disc featuring production by Dr. Dre and Pharrell Williams. Justin Timberlake guests on second single “Ain’t No Doubt About It.”
• Band of Horses have unveiled a new video for “Laredo,” off their May 18th album Infinite Arms. Watch it after the jump.

Photograph by Mark Seliger

“You hear it all the time: Rock is dead,” David Fricke writes in the new issue of Rolling Stone, on sale at newsstands today. “But the current state of music is the same as it ever was: There is the good and the bad, and there is always plenty of the former, if you’re willing to seek it out.”

To prove the point, the Rolling Stone staff assembled a rundown of the 40 top reasons to be excited about music right now, starting with our cover stars, the Black Eyed Peas, a group that has perfected the art of global domination thanks to the brilliant maneuvering of philosophical leader Will.i.am. The producer/rapper/friend-of-Bono tells Chris Norris about his theory that music works in circles, not squares (the proof: the success of the 45; the failure of the 8-track), the moment he realized an electro album would be a blockbuster (see: The E.N.D.), and how it’s possible to make a whole song a chorus. “Lots of people say, ‘Black Eyed Peas shit is simple,’ and I’ll be like, ‘No, fool, it’s the most complex shit you even could fathom, that’s the reason it works everywhere around the planet,” Will.i.am says.

Check out photos from the Peas’ The E.N.D. tour opener.

RS also spotlights MGMT (Number 17), who tell Vanessa Grigoriadis about rejecting fame in the wake of their blockbuster Oracular Spectacular and returning to their real psychedelic roots for their new disc Congratulations. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser also open up about their unique dynamic and their personal struggles after their first disc blew up big: “We needed to figure out how to exist in the real world, but we had no idea how to do it,” Goldwasser says. “To have a record deal come along — well, we pretty much convinced ourselves that aliens had done it.” Stay tuned for bonus Q&A, only at RollingStone.com.

Watch MGMT talk about the making of Congratulations on the set of their RS photo shot.

The countdown also includes supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, Chuck Berry’s incredible monthly residency in St. Louis, the returns of the Strokes and T.I., the rise of ridiculously cool gear (like the micro music player), Dr. Luke’s awesomely trashy radio hits, badass country singer Jamey Johnson and U2’s epic stadium tour. Plus, RS spotlights female pop divas who are ruling the charts from Rihanna and Katy Perry to Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga.

Go behind Katy Perry’s sexy shoot, plus get the inside scoop on her upcoming album and writing the ultimate California song.

Also in this issue: David Fricke on Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace show, Justin Bieber Q&A, Rob Sheffield examines The Vampire Diaries, Tim Dickinson on Washington’s financial watchdog Elizabeth Warren, and reviews of new discs from Hole, Kate Nash and more.

Photo: Van Diji/AFP/Getty
Before MGMT’s second album Congratulations even hit stores, it was being hailed as the Most Polarizing Album of 2010. The LP’s aesthetic is a galaxy away from the electro-pop of Oracular Spectacular’s hits “Kids” and “Time to Pretend” — Congratulations finds Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden mining late-’60s psychedelic and folk rock for a nine-track album that, for better or worse, makes no attempts to recapture their earlier commercial success.

“With Congratulations, the knowing smartasses of Oracular Spectacular seem confused about what’s next. The result is a hazy, hit-and-miss album that will likely alienate some fans of the debut, but one that also testifies to MGMT’s restlessness as songwriters and human beings,” Will Hermes writes in his three-star review. “They attempt to not just keep it weird — which they’ve done — but to figure out how they can be in it for the long haul. It’s a solid start.” Highlights include “Someone’s Missing” and the first “single” “Flash Delirium.” For much more on MGMT, check out our profile of the band in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone, out tomorrow.

Freelance Whales’ Weathervanes is also out this week, earning a two-and-a-half-star review from Rolling Stone. “Known for playing impromptu gigs on subway platforms, and fond of banjos and glockenspiels, these Queens natives are about as friendly as a New York band can be,” Christian Hoard wrote in his review. “Mostly, though, Weathervanes is pleasantly nonconfrontational — like a Demetri Martin routine, minus the funny.”

For much more on the latest albums released these past few weeks, check out our Album Reviews section.

• The 53rd Annual Grammys will air live on CBS from Los Angeles’ Staples Center on February 13, 2011. Albums and songs released between September 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010 will be eligible for awards.

• A Los Angeles judge has ordered Nas to pay spousal support to ex-wife Kelis. TMZ reports the MC will pay Kelis $10,000 a month until he catches up on the $299,015.50 he owes her in back child and spousal support payments.
• Hank Williams received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize yesterday for “his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity,” CNN reports.
• Supergrass have called it quits. The Independent reports the Britpop band is splitting up after 17 years over “musical differences.”