Despite all their rage, Skillet are still just some rats in a cage in their new video for "Monster." In their new video, the punishingly heavy rock band from M-Town, TN. are the subject of an experiment gone wrong. They rage against the machine (or the doctors who watch them through Plexiglas).

Skillet's rocking leads to a prison break of sorts (substitute creepy hospital for prison), where the band -- made up of John Cooper and his wifey, Korey, along with Ben Kasica and Jen Ledger -- duck the efforts of a rather Matrixy SWAT team who are trying to lock them down. Damn the man! The track comes from Skillet's latest, Awake, and it features some really awesome "Oi's!" which you don't hear nearly enough these days.

In preparation for what will no doubt be a sumptuous main course of a video, we humbly offer this appetizer to Rise Against's video for their third single from their Appeal To Reason album, "Savior." Little can be gathered from this brief glimpse. The video, directed by alt-rock auteur Kevin Kerslake (Stone Temple Pilots, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins) is divided into two parts: a performance by Rise Against lit merely by flares, and sub-plot featuring someone dressed as a polar bear.

We can only hope that the video culminates with the polar bear man meeting up with the guy dressed as the disco mutt from Daft Punk's "Da Funk" video. The full video for "Savior" premieres Monday.

Is it possible that, despite what history and everyday logic would tell you, that Soul Asylum invented the Seattle sound... in Minneapolis? Dave Pirner and co started seasoning Neil Young loner folk with country twang and punk aggression back in 1981, the same year  Kurt Cobain was picking out Cars covers on his first guitar at 14.

The sound they came up with was definitely grunge. Whether or not Soul Asylum was the first band to play it doesn't really matter. It's usually impossible to attribute the origins of musical styles to single artists, anyway.

But the fact that Soul Asylum didn't come out of the '90s as notorious as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins did, is a little bit surprising -- I mean come on. Look at Dave Pirner! He was like Meg Ryan with dreadlocks! And that scratchy crybaby voice... Man. Sweetest dude ever. No wonder Winona Ryder was so wild for him. Now you can't even find a decent photo of him on the internet. WEIRD.

In the Unplugged performance below, Soul Asylum go easy on their classic Grave Dancers Union opener, "Somebody To Shove," fleshing it out with an orchestra. Watch the video, and tell me that song's not just as good as "Bullet With Butterfly Wings."

Just a few days ago I went on and on about Silversun Pickups being the second coming of Smashing Pumpkins. How weird to come to the end of Thursday and find original Pumpkins bassist James Iha on my desk, along with Taylor Hanson (Hanson), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick). Together they are supergroup Tinted Windows (we warned you!) and, surprisingly enough, they kinda sound like a bubblegummy... you guessed it, Smashing Pumpkins. Or wait... is it Siamese Hanson?

Either way, it's about to get in your head with a vengeance. The ooh-ahhs in the chorus are sonic barbs -- like the ones they put on the ends of fishing hooks -- and they're about to tear your brain to shreds in the sweetest and gentlest way. This may seem like a lazy cop-out, but the honest truth is that this band combines Smashing Pumpkins' edge with Hanson's pop sensibility, Fountains Of Wayne's quirky light-heartedness and Cheap Trick's ballsy muscle. It's first grade math. And it sounds amazing. Brace yourself for pop-rock perfection.

You know Siamese Dream? That Smashing Pumpkins record? Well, I don't wanna date myself too bad here, but as a teenager, that album totally changed my life. Maybe even started my life, in a way. I was probably 13 or 14, sitting in my bedroom -- far, far away from my parents downstairs -- with hands clamped to my temples, hair pressed up out of whack and eyes bugged out, just absolutely losing it to the vaguely threatening alien atmosphere of that sexy, desperate sound. What in the world, I wondered, could a "Silverf***" be? Well, obviously they went on to make a lot of great music, but honestly, I lost touch with the Pumpkins after Siamese Dream. Always hoped they'd do a follow-up, but it never came.

Silversun Pickups -- the shimmeringly smoggy Los Angeles emoters featured this week on "The Leak" -- definitely have their own sound. Somehow their latest record, Swoon, manages to be hazy and lazier than Siamese Dream, while still sounding more urgent and aggressive. But there are definitely still major echoes of early Smashing Pumpkins in lead singer Brian Aubert's reedy, pleading tenor. And there are definitely points where Swoon sounds more Siamese than Mellon Collie ever did. In fact, can we make that an official indie rock adjective? It describes the sound of Swoon -- streaming in full on MTV.com'sThe Leak, right now, as promised -- better than anything else I can come up with. More than hazy or fuzzy or shimmering or wild, Swoon sounds siamese.

+ Listen to every track of Silversun Pickups' Swoon. You'll see.

Back in '91, before all the glitz and graphics and manipulatively salacious voiceovers, all we had at MTV were great bands, board games and a huge amount of lard. That's no clever wordplay. I literally mean that we had a ton of Crisco on hand. Or so it would seem from the very lo-fi production below, in which Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic strips down to briefs and gets a full body Crisco massage from Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl, before playing slippery Twister with Smashing Pumpkins.

Billy Corgan has long hair. I forgot that was even possible. Also, pre-peroxide James Iha looks so nervous, it's amazing he didn't die. Watch as a very lively (read: alive) Kurt Cobain playfully launches globs of Crisco across the room as a quiet audience inexplicably barely looks up from their beers and cigarettes. It looks like it's about one in the afternoon. What?! The nineties officially made absolutely no sense.

What do you get when you cross Taylor Hanson with one of the founding members of Smashing Pumpkins? It isn't "Disarm," but it sure ain't "MMMbop" either. The answer is Tinted Windows, the pop-rock outfit formed by the middle Hanson (now a father of four), James Iha, Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger (he also wrote the Jonas Brothers' "I Am What I Am") and Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos, who joined Cheap Trick about two decades before Taylor Hanson was born.

If you're expecting Middle of Nowhere Part 2, expect to be disappointed (also, let it go already!) Their debut single, "Kind of a Girl," sounds far more like Fountains of Wayne than a screechy teeny track (thanks to no pint-sized Zac on vox.)

Watch for Tinted Windows' April 21st full-length debut on S-Curve Records (which means they'll be in the same family as We The Kings!) and SXSW performances before that.

Until then, listen to "Kind of a Girl," and Hanson fans, talk to me: Is Tinted Windows your version of the Second Coming, or are you a Hanson purist?

+ PLUS: Watch Hanson's MTV.com Live performances!

+ John Mayer may be a one-woman man now (or so hopes Jennifer Aniston), but there may have been one or two female fans before her. "I might have hooked up with people," Mayer admits, "but as soon as we hooked up, they weren't fans anymore." Oh come on, John, it couldn't have been that bad...right? (Usmagazine.com)

+ Jamie Lynn Spears parlays her new baby into a potentially lucrative cover deal with OK! magazine. (MTV)

+ Break out the bubbly! Lil Wayne's new album is now back in the #1 spot. (Rolling Stone)

+ The Smashing Pumpkins to celebrate their 20th anniversary by playing a bunch of small venues and rubbing Billy Corgan's head for good luck. (Billboard)

+ Young Jeezy puts politics aside long enough to party hardy with Vibe magazine. (MTV)