When a Plain White T showers, is that called doing laundry? Despite a long day of interviews that left the boys craving a refresher, the Chicago-based quintet--singer and guitarist Tom Higgenson, lead guitarist Tim Lopez, rhythm guitarist Dave Tirio, bassist Mike Retondo, and drummer De'Mar Hamilton--breezed into the Yahoo! music room dressed like sharp lads off a vaudeville caravan or the (pre-rioting) Gangs Of New York set. Alas, the sartorial efforts were not for us, but for an on-camera fashion discussion earlier that day. But we'd like to think they got a little snazzy for Yahoo!, too.

Whether it was their long day or just their natural charisma, the band came into the music room with such a relaxed demeanor, it felt like we were just hanging out in someone's living room. It was interesting to see the band's dynamic: As one began to wander, another pulled him back on task. Once everyone was settled their professionalism took over, and without prompting they jumped right into

Well-known married musical couples who perform together are few and far between--but for Herb Alpert and Lani Hall, that's just one of many unusual aspects of their distinguished careers.

The pair just released I Feel You, their first studio album in nearly 10 years, which reinterprets several well-known classics of the past few decades, including the Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" and "Blackbird," Peggy Lee's "Fever" and Van Morrison's "Moondance," among other similarly venerable tunes.

Also covered: a reinterpretation of "What Now My Love," a hit for Alpert back in 1966 with his revered Tijuana Brass outfit.

In fact, the storied history shared by Alpert and Hall--he not just as the co-founder of A&M Records but the recording superstar who rose to fame in the '60s and sold over 75 million albums worldwide, she as a Grammy winner and member of Sergio Mendes' much-respected Brasil 66--is part of what makes the pair unique: They make music not for commerce but purely for the love of it.

I was just 6 when I first heard Les Paul play his signature tune on the radio "How High The Moon," and it blew my mind! I didn't know what the sound was and my mum said it was the electric guitar. I wasn't sure how it was different to an ordinary guitar. I thought you plugged it straight into the voltage in the wall. However my mum told me that "it was all tricks." I knew, at that very moment, that I wanted to play the electric guitar. I made my first guitar with some wood I bought from the local wood shop. It was horrible but I played that thing as much as I could and never looked back. The sounds that Les made on his guitar, and what he did later with multi-tracking, were a revelation and completely excited every part of me.

My mum loved classical and jazz music. She first introduced my sister and I to the sounds of the '30s and '40s, but it was my sister's connection with a college pal that really cemented my future. She introduced me to Jimmy Page and we became inseparable. Jamming

In late November last year, the great city of San Francisco suddenly found themselves with some new additions to twenty strategically chosen bus stops--giant digital touch screens. The Yahoo! Bus Stop Derby campaign installed touch screens with four different interactive games that gave residents an opportunity to win points for their community. The ten-week program was launched to promote public transportation usage and neighborly competition. Certainly made waiting for the bus much less painful, but the big incentive for the winning community: a full blown block party featuring a free performance by viral video kings OK Go. No wonder over 100,000 games were played!

Earlier this month, Yahoo congratulated the residents of North Beach for winning the most points out of the whole city and threw a huge rooftop party on top of the SF Art Institute. 800 lucky people lined up for games, food, performances and of course for OK Go. In an act of true confidence, one fan had his night, week

My earliest recollection of Cold War Kids was their presence chumming around with members of Delta Spirit at a run-down loft concert years ago in Whittier, California (a night where I only remember drinking in a parked car, friends arguing and tiny faux-riental rugs strewn about). And to be honest, it took me a while to realize that they and Kings of Leon were different bands, as the two bands had mutual friends within my peripheral circle. Rock critics found the lines of differentiation between these bands fuzzy as well, throwing The Black Keys into the pool too. With their new album Mine Is Yours, which dropped this week, Cold War Kids are certainly not the band they were before, making a bid for mainstream acceptance.

The Kids gave the sold-out audience at Third Man Records in Detroit, Michigan a taste of that close-knit warehouse concert feel with their performance last month. Owned by Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, the record label-come-record

Portland indie-folk collective the Decemberists polarized their fanbase with their increasingly ornate concept albums--like 2006's song cycle The Crane Wife and 2009's especially lavish rock opera The Hazards Of Love--but with their most sixth full-length album, The King Is Dead, they've made a conscious effort to go back to the sparser sound of their early Kill Rock Stars output, and even to their 2001 Hush Records EP.

Influenced by the '80s and '90s college rock that changed band leader Colin Meloy's life (the album title itself is a loving nod to a certain iconic album by the Smiths), the rustic and Americana-tinged release was recorded in a barn at Oregon's Pendarvis Farm, strongly evokes R.E.M., and features collaborations with alt-country goddess Gillian Welch and...wait for it...none other than R.E.M.'s Peter Buck himself.

The Decemberists recently visited Yahoo! Music's studios, where Meloy and strong-but-silent guitarist Colin Funk (who you may recognize thanks to his Stephen

On an intimate stage festooned with backup musicians--including a whole string and brass section, plus some total hotties on guitars and bass--Welsh songstress Duffy recently regaled the audience at London's legendary Café de Paris nightclub with songs off her sophomore album, Endlessly. Although her latest release hasn't performed as well as her debut Rockferry, which earned Duffy a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album and nods for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, it's certainly not for lack of vocal talent.

If albums were like diaries--and Duffy's saccharine performance at Café de Paris helps that girlish metaphor along--Endlessly documents the calm after the Rockferry storm, after a young woman has swept up the pieces from a devastating heartbreak and is ready to put love back on the chopping block. Seeing that audiences have come to expect emotionally broken songs like her pleading, albeit uptempo breakout single "Mercy" and her tearful ballad "Warwick Avenue,"

In 2006, My Chemical Romance released their darkly ambitious concept album, The Black Parade, and thus became the self-proclaimed (as well as fanbase-proclaimed) saviors of rock 'n' roll and life as we knew it. And then...they just went away. Four years later, no new MCR music was forthcoming (other than a 2009 Bob Dylan cover on the Watchmen soundtrack)...and loyal followers began to fret as breakup rumors swirled, longtime drummer Bob Bryar departed the group in the middle of recording Parade's follow-up, and MCR were unjustly accused of being a negative influence on impressionable young listeners. For a while, it actually seemed like MCR would never, ever return from the blackness. Was it possible that they wouldn't save the world after all? Where were My Chemical Romance when we needed them most?

"I wasn't sure if we were ever gonna do it again," frontman Gerard Way flat-out tells Yahoo! Music, explaining that the band actually scrapped an entire album recorded last year and