Hypeblog

Joe Jackson’s first album in five years, “Rain,” will arrive Jan. 29 via Rykodisc.

Hear Music, the label started by Concord Music Group and Starbucks, has signed Hilary McRae as the company’s first developing artist.

“Some of us have been wanting to do this for a long time,” B-52’s vocalist Fred Schneider tells Billboard.com ahead of the band’s new “Funplex,” due Feb. 26 on Astralwerks. “A couple years ago we just started writing, and everything worked out.”

The estate of the slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. filed a federal court motion yesterday (Oct. 29) claiming that a prison inmate who implicated a former police officer in the killing was lying when he recanted his testimony.

Fans who missed Rufus Wainwright’s live, song-for-song interpretation of Judy Garland’s 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall can experience them thanks to an upcoming CD and DVD.

Three months after the Who wrapped up a year-long tour, singer Roger Daltrey is chomping at the bit to return to the road, saying he hopes the band will visit Japan and Australia next year.

Alanis Morissette has joined the cast of sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick’s semiautobiographical feature adaptation “Radio Free Albemuth.” The Canadian pop singer plays Sylvia, a woman who shows up in the vision of a record label executive named Nick (Jonathan Scarfe) as a glamorous singer.

When he’s not dispensing advice as a celebrity judge on Fox TV’s “The Next Great American Band,” the Goo Goo Dolls’ Johnny Rzeznik will be focusing on the band’s past — and its future.

In between large bouts of touring, indie rock act Annuals has been able to carve out about a month’s worth of studio time for the follow-up to its 2006 debut, “Be He Me.”

Donovan, famous for ’60s pop hits such as “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and “Mellow Yellow,” has announced plans to open the Invincible Donovan University, where students will adhere to the principles of transcendental meditation.