"Kristen, you are so hot!"

In the appropriately rank alley behind a small Los Angeles club called the Smell, Cherie Currie, former lead singer of the '70s all-girl band the Runaways, yells out to ingénue-of-the-moment Kristen Stewart, standing a few feet away.

"In the fall of 2008, after signing with, making an album for, then getting dropped by Island Records, Malachai found out they were really screwed. The British psych-rock duo's name, then spelled "Malakai," already belonged to an American rapper. "It was like, 'Oh no, not another thing!' " says Scott (just Scott), who handles the music while his partner, Gee, sings.

Beach House's music may move in seductive, slow-motion waves, but the people who make it are far from mellow. "We're insane and neurotic," explains guitarist-keyboardist Alex Scally, who formed the band along with singer-organist Victoria Legrand in 2004.

Two months before the release of Yeasayer's new album, I get a sign that the band's world has changed. I'm sitting in a jury selection room at the Brooklyn Supreme Court on a warm day in early December. An Orthodox Jewish woman is arguing with a defense lawyer about the details of the traffic accident we're being asked to consider when someone taps me on the shoulder.

Since forming Alkaline Trio in his native Chicago in 1996, Matt Skiba has been hit by five cars and drawn the ire of Christian radio stations for talking about his membership in the Church of Satan. Despite those crises, his band's 2008 album, Agony & Irony, peaked on the Billboard chart at No. 13.

Scholarship money usually goes toward, you know, school, but John Paul "JP" Pitts, guitarist and singer for Florida's Surfer Blood, had other ideas. "I got some cash for college from the state government because I had good grades," says the unrepentant 23-year-old. "But I ended up using a bunch of it to buy microphones -- good ones." He laughs. "I eventually quit school.