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  DAN HYMAN  

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Two years ago, a few months after their 2008 debut album, Swan Songs, was certified gold, Hollywood Undead — a group of six masked hooligans from SoCal who combine elements of rock and hip-hop with a raw, punk-rock attitude — still weren’t exactly sure how to define their sound. To them, this was hardly a concern. “It’s like, ‘Take it or leave it,’” Johnny 3 Tears, the group’s most outspoken member, said when pressed on the issue in a 2009 interview. “If you don’t like it, we don’t care.”

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Audiences ate it up however, succumbing to the band’s no-nonsense repertoire of smash-mouth anthems. But now, as they prepare to release their follow-up, American Tragedy (due in stores April 5th), the band is ready to respond; they felt an evolution of their sound was not only desirable, but perhaps expected. “If we came out with the same record twice we’d be considered a failure,” says group member J-Dog, bunched into a crowded booth with his five bandmates on a rainy Hollywood afternoon. “I think everybody stepped up their game,” Johnny 3 Tears adds. “We didn’t want it to sound like Swan Songs Part 2.”

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  DAN HYMAN  

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Photo courtesy of Lucy Hamblin
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24-year-old Yunalis Zarai could be in Malaysia right now. The singer could be swarmed by paparazzi, unable to leave her home without having her picture snapped. Or perhaps she might be in a law office… after all, she graduated with a J.D. five years ago. Rather, she’s on a Beverly Hills rooftop one recent March afternoon, feeling liberated, free and thoroughly content to be in a place where she’s none of the above… rather, just one more relatively unknown musician trying to make it in a city with no remorse.

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“I love it here,” Zarai, better known as genteel, satin-voiced singer/songwriter Yuna, says with a genuine smile. “It’s calm and people do their own thing.”

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Calm might not be a common descriptor for Los Angeles, but for Yuna  — a bona fide celebrity in her home country — it’s an escape grounded in passion. “A bunch of people (in Malaysia) were like, ‘Why would you want to go (to America)? Your career is big here,’” Yuna recalls. Her response was simple, blunt and honest: “It’s my dream.”

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  DAN HYMAN  

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–Taylor Swift is officially ridiculously popular: her album sales have eclipsed the 20 million mark. Watch a video of her accepting a special plaque for this milestone right here.

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–Britney Spears new album, Femme Fatale, is on pace to debut next week at Number One.

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–Lily Allen’s wedding invitation has leaked and, needless to say, she isn’t pleased.

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–Gym Class Heroes new album, Papercut Chronicles Part 2, will feature Adam Levine from Maroon 5.

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–Lady Gaga will join V magazine as a guest columnist.

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–Taking Back Sunday have posted a new song “El Paso.” Listen to it here.
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    I f***ing love this song! Not only is this track all I could have hoped for from the original lineup, but it’s a track I’ve been waiting to hear from Taking Back Sunday for years.

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 –Surfer Blood have posted a new song “I’m Not Ready” which you can download for free right here.

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–Listen to a new Foo Fighters song “Arlandria” from their new album Wasting Light right here.

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–Paramore’s website has hit 200,000 members and to celebrate the band has released a video showing the band playing an acoustic version of “Looking Up.” Check it out here.

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–Following Screeching Weasel frontman Ben Weasel’s violent act at SXSW, Weasel Fest has been canceled.

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–TV On The Radio, Cat Power and The Roots have been added to the lineup for LouFest in St. Louis.
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  JONAH BAYER  

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Licensing firm Brand Sense Partners thinks that their perfume line deal with Britney Spears stinks. Now they’re taking the pop singer and her father to court. Yesterday, the firm announced that they’re suing Spears and her father Jamie Spears for over $10 million for breach of contract. The lawsuit was filed yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

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The company claims that they brokered Spears’ perfume deal with the cosmetics company Elizabeth Arden Inc. in 2004, but have still not been paid the 35 percent commission that both parties agreed upon. Personally, we think someone in Spears’ camp should also ask the perfume company’s publicity firm why this perfume has been out for seven years and we’ve never heard of it until today… but we digress.

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  JONAH BAYER  

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If you’re a Coldplay fan you probably remember back in December when frontman Chris Martin told the BBC that the band’s follow-up to 2008’s Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends would be a concept album centered around “two like-minded outsiders who meet in a very difficult environment and therefore have a journey together.” We haven’t heard much since then, however recent developments make it clear that the album is almost finished.

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On their official blog, the band’s crony, Roadie #42, announced that the band and producer Brian Eno are currently laying down the album’s vocal overdubs. “Brian is back in the fold this week and the fellas are gathered around the mic for much of the time,” the post says. “It’s a tremendous thing to get close up to. When the guys are belting it out with the track on headphones, all that can be heard in the room is the blast of harmonies. It’s huge, powerful, and yet completely unaided by technology, just a pure, organic human bloom.”

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