Do you know the highly digable grammy-winning MC behind Shabazz Palaces?

The catalyst behind one of Seattle's most innovative hiphop projects doesn't want you to know who he is. You won't find his name in the credits of local outfit Shabazz Palaces' two phenomenal CDs, nor will you find a Shabazz Palaces MySpace page. You will search YouTube in vain for any Shabazz Palaces clips. The group's official website contains no clues regarding the leader's identity. While most rappers bust their asses to get a sliver of shine, Shabazz Palaces' mastermind prefers anonymity.

With a Grammy earned 15 years ago and two classic albums recorded with the Digable Planets trio, this smooth, smart rapper will have trouble maintaining his mystique. But it's admirable that he's decided to let his art stand or fall on its own (prodigious) merits when he could easily cash in on his sterling legacy.

I fully expect that mystique to be dashed by the very first comment on this story; don't let me down, readers!

Dave Segal interrogates Oh Sees leader John Dwyer's on the secret of his many varied freak-rock successes:

Your musical approach has ranged from barbed noise rock to very gentle bedroom-recording balladry to pseudo-homoerotic electro to lo-fi weirdness. Out of all these styles, is there one that you think represents the true John Dwyer, or do they all somehow equally reflect the essence of your being? (Yes, I would ask Neil Young the same question.)

I am not a complex man. But everything I've done I can say seemed right at the time. I still look back on Zeigenbock Kopf and think it was someone else. Ah, drugs.

Art Brut's Eddie Argos on the surprisingly fruitful slap-dash recording of their new album, Art Brut vs. Satan:

"Well, you know, we're professionals. We play very well. There's the song on the album, "Am I Normal?"—at the end of that, I say, "I've lost the ability to speak," and though I had loads more lyrics, when I sang it, I genuinely did lose the ability to speak, and so [imitates stammering]. And that was it. Frank Black was like, "That was it, that's the take we're keeping." And I said, "But, look, Charles [Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, aka Frank Black], I've got loads of lyrics." "Nope, nope. This take." So, it's strange it sounds polished, 'cause his favorite takes, he was intentionally choosing mistakes."

Hopeless (two weeks belated) gushing about the new Grizzly Bear:

It finally landed for me last Thursday night. The long heat wave of a day had been swept up by sudden winds into a red-stained sunset and surrendered up to chilly cloud cover. There had been drinks, now it was after 2:00 a.m., and there might have been more drinks still. The room was dark and quiet, Grizzly Bear was playing on the stereo, and the song's delicate but insistent piano pulse, trembling guitars, rhythmic counteractivity, and crystalline vocal harmonies filled the room like some new weather system moving into an atmospheric vacuum—the low-pressure, melancholy verses giving way to the high-reaching, hopeful choruses and that terrifically drifting coda. Perfect for an evening of sweet upheaval, climatic or otherwise.

Data Breaker on Cylob and Hecate:

Hecate (aka Rachael Kozak) says her music sounds like "the opening of a portal to the unspeakable void of existence." No hyperbole. She began her career as a breakcore producer with an emphasis on sexuality; the tracks on her collaborative album Nymphomatriarch derive from the sounds of her sexual encounters with Venetian Snares during their 2003 tour.

My Philosophy on a benefit for Shomari "Sho Nuph" Shanks:

I sit here listening to the mandatory listening, classic Seattle comp 14 Fathoms Deep—specifically the track "Continuations" by Union of Opposites, featuring a verse from my homie Shomari "Sho Nuph" Shanks, a beloved veteran MC and good spirit who many of y'all know. My thoughts are with the big homie—one of the coolest, most positive and knowledgeable cats I've met in this burg; last summer Sho experienced end-stage renal failure (that is, both his kidneys stopped working). Shomari needs a transplant, and like the majority of artists in this town, he's uninsured; so the good folks of 206 Zulu and his friends (including some of the town's best from the hiphop and electronic scenes) are throwing him a benefit called ALL4SHO.

Underage on the Lonely Forest:

Since their victory in 2006's EMP Sound Off! competition, the band have recorded with guru producer Jack Endino, written a wild rock opera about the end of the world, and recently played to a sold-out crowd of insanely loyal fans at the Vera Project for the release of their album We Sing the Body Electric. The album is the band's most comprehensive collection yet, a smooth amalgamation of the piano-driven ballads that typified lead singer John Van Deusen's early solo work and the band's recent turn toward head-bobbing rock-and-roll sing-alongs.

The Score on Igor Stravinsky's the Firebird:

The Firebird's ominous atmosphere almost sinks into the standard-issue stygian gloom you've heard in countless horror films until Stravinsky begins, as he described it a half-century ago, to "out-Rimsky Rimsky." Seeking to surpass his legendary teacher, the master orchestrator Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844—1908), Stravinsky quickly unfurls glittering colors with muscular, rhythmic urgency.

A speed round of new singles in It's a Hit:

Speaking of English dance music, big thumbs-up to Boy Better Know's "Too Many Man" (Boy Better Know), in which grime MCs Shorty, Skepta, Wiley, JME, and Frisco hilariously fess up to the aspects of their scene that seem like a nut-grabbing contest, and Meleka's "Go (Crazy Cousinz Remix)" (Crazy Cousinz), a savvy update of early-'00s two-step garage, especially the stuttering vocal hook ("I don't wanna be with you"). Speaking of the "hardcore continuum" (Simon Reynolds's term for UK soundsystem styles running from jungle and two-step to dubstep and grime), there's Akira Kiteshi's preposterous "Pinball" (Black Acre), in which dubstep goes to the arcade and gets swallowed whole.

Plus! Up & Comings, Party Crasher, Poster of the Week, and our complete, searchable Music Calendar.