Spring/Summer Preview

Lots of music coming out in the coming weeks, which means it's probably time to do some spring cleaning of your iPod and make room for some of the season's upcoming releases. To help you out, here's the first installment of Baeble's Spring/Summer Preview:

Queens of the Stone Age's upcoming Era Vulgaris is slated for a release in early June, where it will usher in the summer with aural tons of heavy riffage. The band's fifth record will also feature cameos by Julian Casablancas, Trent Reznor, Mark Lanegan, and Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. That's a curious lineup, but hey - it seems to work. Want proof? Check out QOTSA's website for a streaming preview of the song "3's & 7's."

It's been more than three years since SoCal pop-rockers Rooney first captured the hearts of impressionable young women with their self-titled debut. After scrapping the results of several attempted follow-ups, the guys are back - for real this time - with Calling The World. They may be wearing their '70s influences a little too prominently this time around, but is that really so bad when such influences include The Raspberries, The Cars, Badfinger, and early Tom Petty? And will those impressionable young girls still tape Rooney photospreads to the metallic insides of their high-school lockers? Check out new tune "Where Did Your Heart Go Missing" and judge for yourself.

Cake is going the distance; Cake is going for speed. Cake wants a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket. Cake also wants to continue releasing albums, hence the band's upcoming B-Sides And Rarities disc. This actually looks pretty cool, though. The album art is a "scratch and sniff" card, which is just plain excellent, and the tracklisting includes covers of Sabbath's "War Pigs" (also covered by anybody with Guitar Hero II) and Barry White's "Never, Never Gonna Give You Up." What's better, you can listen to every track.