On the same day that America inaugurates Barack Obama as its new president, A.C. Newman will be releasing his new solo album, 'Get Guilty.' But Newman, leader of Canadian indie rockers the New Pornographers, isn't worried about sharing the glory with the President-elect .

"It's a nice coincidence," Newman tells Spinner about the January 20th release date. "It's nice to have a little footnote there."

For 'Get Guilty,' his second solo release, Newman enlisted some additional help from Mates of State as well as Superchunk's Jon Wurster. "I think this record is maybe a little more rock," Newman says. "I think I wasn't afraid to be a little bit more ragged."

As for his main gig, New Pornographers fans can expect more from them in the coming year. "I don't really think of my solo records as a separate career or anything," Newman says. "I think I'll probably concentrate on the New Pornographers."

Death Cab for Cutie want to take over the airwaves with its next album. Although frontman Ben Gibbard hasn't even begun writing the follow up to last year's 'Narrow Stairs,' the band's producer/guitarist Chris Walla hopes to make a bigger, bolder musical statement with Death Cab's next disc.

"I have no interest in doing anything that's mild and meek," Walla tells Alternative Press. "I want to make a radio record this next time out. There's no reason for us to keep doing what we're doing if we're making meeker, smaller records." He explains, "I don't particularly have any real connection to a lot of the mellower stuff that Ben writes. I really feel like he's getting his best stuff when he's being assertive and forward."

The transition to a major label in 2004 contributed to the band's shifting sounds, Walla says. "In a way, when we signed to Atlantic, 'Plans' was a sort of partial, half-hearted step into an attempt to make something that is more appealing on a broader scale." He adds, "I think that 'Narrow Stairs' was really sort of a reactionary move -- like very much the opposite of that. Maybe it's just a phase, but I'm really interested in making something that is appealing on a really broad level and something we can be really satisfied with. But I think that there's a way to bridge those two gaps."

U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is speaking out in criticism of frontman Bono over his bandmate's relationship with politicians. Mullen says he is specifically distressed by the singer's relationship former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"My biggest problem really is sometimes the company that he keeps," Mullen says in the new issue of Q magazine. "And I struggle with that. Particularly the political people, less the financial people. Particularly Tony Blair -- I mean, I think Tony Blair's a war criminal. And I think he should be tried as a war criminal. And then I see Bono and him as pals, and I'm going, 'I don't like that.'

Kiss bassist Gene Simmons will lend his animated likeness to a new stop-motion comedy series that will debut next summer as part of Nickelodeon's 'Nick at Nite' programming. The show will follow a dentist and his family as they hit the open road in a toothbrush-topped "dental mobile."

"Michael Eisner is producing. I was asked to play me," Simmons writes of the series -- which will also star 'Weeds' veteran Kevin Nealon -- on Kissonline. The show is about a family whose house burned down, so they get into their motor home and travel the country. The script is very funny."

In related news, Simmons' bandmate Paul Stanley will put his artwork on display in two New Jersey galleries in late February. Stanley will participate in VIP receptions at Wentworth Gallery's Hackensack and Short Hills locations on February 27 and 28, respectively.

The Grateful Dead will embark on their first concert tour in five years when they kicks off an arena tour on April 12. After months of fan speculation prompted by the band's performance last October at the 'Change Rocks' concert/rally for Barack Obama in State College, PA, the group -- consisting of original Dead members members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart -- will start its nineteen date, month-long trek in Greensboro, North Carolina.

"We've got some unfinished business," guitarist/singer Weir said in a statement. "Everybody has a whole new bag of tricks; we have the body of material we worked up over the years and we have a mind meld going on here and it would be a sin to let that just wither and die."

Prince plans to release three new albums in 2009. The Purple One is now final negotiations with "a major retailer" to distribute physical CDs and is readying an interactive website where fans can buy the music.

"The gatekeepers have to change," he told the Los Angeles Times this week, explaining his decision to sidestep the major labels. The new discs are tentatively titled 'MPLSOUND', 'Elixir' (his collaboration with new protégé Bria Valente) and 'Lotus Flower.'

'MPLSOUND' is "an electro-flavored solo effort" of "trippy, experimental pop songs" according to music scribe Ann Powers, who was invited to Prince's Los Angeles compound. It was recorded at Paisley Park Studios and includes a rap from one-time A Tribe Called Quest frontman Q-Tip.

Don't call Ryan Adams Ryan Adams. That is if you're referencing his work with the Cardinals. In an interview with Spinner after the band's performance for AOL Sessions, Adams lamented that the group's previous albums, including the most recent, 'Cardinology,' says "Ryan Adams and the Cardinals" because of the record label.

"People really don't understand [that] I'm just in the band," he tells Spinner. "I don't do s---, I don't run anything. They're just using my name because somebody thinks I had some level of success, which is such f---ing total bulls---. No one knows who the f--- I am. That's why they go, 'Bryan Adams?'"

Despite the fact that the global economy's in the crapper, Bjork is taking on a new role as a venture capitalist. The singer is hoping to help revive the economy in her native Iceland, which all but collapsed in 2008.

The singer has teamed with the Reykjavik-based investment company Audur Capital, which was founded and managed by women. The fund was started with an initial investment of 100 million Icelandic krona (approximately $830,000).

That sound? Oh, that's just the breaking of indie loving hearts everywhere.

Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, 32, is set to tie the knot with actress and She and Him vocalist Zooey Deschanel, 28.

Insert your own 'Possess Your Heart' joke here.

While there's no word on how Gibbard popped the question to Deschanel, People reports that the proposal took place before the holidays.

Gibbard, who hails from Washington State, is rumored to relocate permanently to Deschanel's Los Angeles home in Hancock Park. But before the Death Cab brainchild settles in for good, he'll need to fulfill his touring obligations, which include a brief tour of in February, followed by an appearance at Miami's Langerado Festival in March.

Accomplished jazz musician Freddie Hubbard died Monday at California's Sherman Oaks Hospital. The master trumpeter succumbed from complications that stemmed from the heart attack he suffered on November 26. He was 70.

Hubbard dazzled audiences and critics alike as a sideman for the likes of Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Art Blakey, and later as a band leader in his own right. He attracted attention in the 1960s for his superlative work as a member of the Jazz Messengers, the valuable training ground for young musicians led by drummer Blakey.