Look, we all know what you're doing this weekend. You're not preparing for Thanksgiving, raking the last of your leaves before the snow arrives or indulging in this year's batch of Beaujolais Nouveau. Rather, you're going to be at your local cinema watching Taylor Lautner's perfectly-sculpted abdominal muscles in "The Twilight Saga: New Moon." And we can't blame you — it's a heck of a roller coaster ride through teenage angst and vampire mythology. But in between screenings (because you're obviously seeing it more than once), you should catch up on everything you missed this week here on the Newsroom blog.

» Last weekend saw a couple of cool-looking flash mobs in honor of Janet Jackson's Number Ones, and we had a first-person account from one of the dancers. (Be sure to catch Janet this Sunday on the American Music Awards, where she'll open the show.)

» MTV mourned the passing of comedian, TV producer and "Remote Control" host Ken Ober with classic clips and testimonials from friends.

» Rihanna premiered the hotly-anticipated video for "Russian Roulette," which really made us think about the head wound Balthazar Getty received in a David Lynch movie.

» Are you a hardcore fan of Adam Lambert, Kris Allen or Allison Iraheta? Make sure you enter our photo contest, with the winner receiving an autographed copy of the new issue of Elle magazine, which features all three!

» There was no shortage of other "American Idol" news this week. For example, we now know why Kris Allen changed his Twitter name.
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Picking out a key scene from "Cousins," the just-premiered-today video from Vampire Weekend, is something of a mistake. After all, the spastic new clip is all about kinetic energy. The entirety of its three minutes takes place in an alley and features frontman Ezra Koenig rolling backwards and forwards on a track set up in the middle of the street. The clip mixes in a lot of low-fi cuts and funny visual gags, but one thing stays the same: It never stops moving. It's a perfect marriage of visuals to music, as the tune is a prototypical Vampire Weekend workout, full of spastic guitar twitches and rhythms that keep threatening to run away from the track entirely.

However, there is one shot that perfectly melds together just about everything that is brilliant about Vampire Weekend. During the second verse, Koenig is dressed in a tuxedo, and he holds a martini glass full of green liquid that he then throws behind him. Suddenly, his right arm becomes that of a gorilla, and he rips it off at the shoulder, dumping a series of Superballs (apparently that's what keeps Koenig springy) onto the ground. It's simultaneously funny, violent and absurd, not unlike the music on Vampire Weekend's forthcoming album Contra.

Vampire Weekend scored immediate buzz when their self-titled debut became a source of obsession for bloggers, NPR listeners and stoned college students alike. They found a permanent home in people's hearts with jumpy, Peter Gabriel-inspired workouts like "Oxford Comma" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa." Their second album, the hotly-anticipated Contra, will hit the streets on January 12. Stay tuned to MTV News for much more on the band — including a complete track-by-track rundown of Contra — in the coming weeks

There are still a handful of weeks left in 2009, but there is already buzz building around a handful of releases dropping in early 2010. Perhaps the biggest of the new year will be the second album from Vampire Weekend, who will look to continue surfing the wave created by their self-titled debut. The follow-up, Contra, will be hitting the streets on January 12, and will feature much of what made the band so undeniable the first time around: Prickly rhythms, blasts of surf guitar, jazzy inflections, nods to world music and hyper-literate lyrics.

The quartet recently shot a video for the album's first single "Cousins," a jittery track that blends together a sing-songy vocal line with a little bit more guitar savagery underneath (though that's all relative — despite the extra punch, they're still pretty casual). Buzzworthy snagged a 30 second preview of the finished product, and the result is delightfully trippy. It features masks, awkward dancing and some dual-action guitar heroics. Vampire Weekend have always had a knack for creating memorable images (just check out the clip for "Oxford Comma" or the album cover for Contra), and it appears as though "Cousins" will continue on that path. It makes sense, as the band's name comes from the title of a film created by frontman Ezra Koenig.

Check out the teaser below, and be sure to stay tuned for more from Vampire Weekend's extended conversation with MTV News' James Montgomery, rolling out in the coming weeks.

In the Knowles family, Beyoncé grabs all the headlines. And why not? She's an international superstar who was ubiquitous before she could vote, is responsible for some of the decade's most memorable songs, is married to Jay-Z and has an acting and performance resumé to back up her singing chops. (She'll also be entertaining the country on Thanksgiving this year.)

But sister Solange has a knack for grabbing attention as well — but usually with an entirely different crowd. Though the 23-year-old singer has put out two albums that stick mostly with pop, dance music and old school R&B, she appears to be courting the indie rock audience. At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, she dropped in on the Wale-lead house band to sing lead on a cover of Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody," and now she has gone even deeper into the well. Yesterday, she premiered a cover of "Stillness is the Move," a song by Brooklyn art-rockers the Dirty Projectors. She takes the original's trippy groove, lays in a sample of Sou Mann & the Brothers' "Bumpy's Lament" and throws her own smooth croon over it. The result is somehow simultaneously a futuristic exploration and a supercool throwback, full of smokey sexiness and after-hours pomp.

It's not surprising. Solange's woefully underrated and elaborately-named 2008 album Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams was an incredible blend of classic funk, Motown-inspired arrangements and present day cyber-grooves. If that blend doesn't work out for her, she certainly has a future remaking songs by critical indie darlings. Maybe she should take on something by Vampire Weekend next?

Five random thoughts while looking at the cover of Vampire Weekend's brand new album, Contra (which will be released on January 12, 2010).

1) If there's a better way to sum up Vampire Weekend's entire musical output — nay, the totality of their aesthetic and world view — than with a picture of a towheaded Connecticut WASP wearing a piqued Polo, well, then I am not aware of it.

2) Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start. Brrring!

3) This photo is amazing because, though it looks like it was taken at somebody's graduation party at Tavern on the Green in, say, 1983, there is still roughly a 50 percent chance that it was actually taken last week in some bar in Williamsburg or Silverlake. In fact, it would not shock me if the latter were the case, and the photographer was actually Terry Richardson or the Cobra Snake ...

4) … and, to that end, are Vampire Weekend really trying to say that everything — music, fashion, you name it — is cyclical, and as such, they are not plundering the mines of Peter Gabriel or Paul Simon, but rather, ushering their worldbeat-embracing pastel tones back into the mainstream? That they're just doing the inevitable, and that time marches on, forever, in some endless, looping infinity sign, and there is no way of knowing if we're on the downstroke or the upswing of the helix, and that none of that really matters, since we're all going to die someday anyway?

5) Clambakes!

Twitter is a curious thing. Sometimes it lends a great deal of insight into the way somebody's day-to-day mind works. It can be a great platform for comedy, but it can also be a bottomless pit of inanity. But recently I've been following a particular feed that I find endlessly fascinating, and it belongs to Miley Cyrus. Her feed gets updated five to eight times a day, and most of them are filled with genuine human insight and surprising levels of sadness.

The first thing that struck me is how mundane her life appears to be (or at least the things she chooses to tweet about). But it doesn't come across as a famous person narcissistically gazing into her own navel and declaring everything about her life interesting — rather, they are the dispatches of a 16-year-old girl trying to find her way (which, if you recall, is exactly what she is). "Making dinner. AKA a peanut butter and jelly," reads a tweet from yesterday. She even tags it with a smiley-face emoticon. As one of the most famous people on the planet, you would assume that she has a private chef at her beck and call ready to prepare a shark steak sandwich for her. But no! Sometimes being 16 and famous means making yourself a PB&J in the wee hours of the morning.

Cyrus' Twitter also reveals excellent musical taste. She tips her hat to Ryan Adams, Coldplay, Colbie Caillat, Copeland and Vampire Weekend, all in the span of a handful of tweets. But she's also not self-conscious about her choices, as she recently praised Celine Dion.

But the thing that really cuts deep is the profound amount of existential angst that regularly sneaks into her tweets. Read more...

By Steven Roberts

CHICAGO -- A couple of years ago, Vampire Weekend was that “it” band that everyone tagged as the next big thing. Countless magazines, music television networks, blogs, and college radio stations pegged the four kids from Columbia University as the next … whatever. So it was only a matter of time before the predictable backlash began. Luckily for the guys, their bouncy South African township jive-inspired songs have acted as a kind of garlic necklace against the haters, even if two years in they're beginning to wear a bit thin as fans await the next batch of songs.

And how could you hate on any band that takes time out of their busy set to pay tribute to recently deceased Chicago-bred filmmaker John Hughes? The band gave props to the director with a performance of “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” on Sunday afternoon at Lollapalooza.

Lead singer, Ezra Koenig, said Hughes was very important to the city of Chicago, especially the suburbs – shout-out to “Home Alone”’s Kevin McCallister and loveable troublemaker Ferris Bueller. Many of Hughes films, including “The Breakfast Club,” “Home Alone” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” took place in the suburbs of the Second City. Cape Cod's a far cry from Chi Town, but Vampire Weekend won over the Snoop Dogg-awaiting masses.

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by Steven Roberts

CHICAGO -- It’s the final day of Lollapalooza, and we enjoyed some amazing performances this weekend despite adverse weather conditions. On Friday, fans endured the rain and enjoyed performances from Kings of Leon, Depeche Mode and Crystal Castles. They came back the next day to find the raindrops replaced by harsh sunrays, and an amazing performance by the always colorful Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as well as a headbanging good time with Tool.

Well today fans came back for a second day of intense heat, and the final day of Lollapalooza. Sunday's line-up features some big name performances from punk godfather Lou Reed, The Killers, Snoop Dogg and of course Jane’s Addiction, but we wanted to hit the grounds at Grant Park to see what the kids were really excited to see.

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by Steven Roberts

My fellow MTV News teammates 
and I arrived in Chicago yesterday and we've started to settle into our rooms at the Hilton - yup we got 
HBO - preparing for Lolapalooza. The three-day festival features performances by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, Snoop Dogg and Tool among others. There are also a variety of other bands performing throughout the weekend. And luckily for us our hotel is located on 
Michigan Avenue, conveniently across the street from Grant Park where Lolla is held.

It's so convenient that every band seems to be staying here 
too. There are guys walking around lugging their equipment and checking into their rooms. The only thing is we can't seem to make out who any of them are. I 
mean we're sure they're in a band. They wear tight jeans, tattered t-
shirts and have long, unkempt hair, but again, that's generally every 
rock band.

We get back from dinner last night, and the hotel lobby is full of guys who look 
like they're in a band. I'm the hip-hop guy here, so I'll admit I'm not that familiar with some of the smaller acts, but I'll be damn if any of you guys can recognize Portugal. The Man or Animal Collective casually walking by either. So we're standing around going "oh that's the 
guys from..." "Yeah they look really familiar," and "there goes 
Vampire Weekend."

I actually saw Vampire Weekend open for the Clipse about 2 years ago at Columbia University, so I would recognize those oxford shirts and boat shoes anywhere.

I guess the cool thing about Lolla is that by the end of the weekend we'll up on a whole host of new bands. So Monday when we see them walk by we can say "good show."

Perry Farrell does it to us every year. Yes, his brainchild Lollapalooza is one of the best rock deals for the money every summer, with more than 100 bands playing right on the Chicago lakefront in beautiful Grant Park. But whoever maps out the schedule grid must be a masochist, because this year's lineup has more than its share of conflicts that are going to force some serious musical Sophie's choices. I have already begun stewing over the ones that are trying to break my heart.

Friday is not so bad. Yes, I'd like to see White Lies, but I'll probably choose Jersey punk outfit the Gaslight Anthem. And as much as I've always wanted to check out nutso electronic duo Crystal Castles, by evening I'll probably need to be soothed by the dulcet tones of Fleet Foxes. The headliner spot is an easy one for me, since I just caught Kings of Leon but haven't seen Depeche Mode in six years, and I know their show will have a bit more flash than the Followill brothers' more straight-ahead set.
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