Caught in the Net: The Lips against the Fire

The pointless music "beef" is usually the preserve of hip-hop, but other, less likely musicians have been getting involved.

Some weeks ago, the Flaming Lips leader Wayne Coyne told 'Rolling Stone' that Arcade Fire were rude and pompous (tinyurl.com/bsqpua): "They have good tunes, but they're pricks, so fuck 'em." This prompted Win Butler of the Fire to post on the band's site, arcadefire.com: "I wish I could not respond to something like this, but the reality is people will be asking me questions for the next five years..."

Meanwhile, Radiohead were taking heat from Kanye West (tinyurl.com/cnz7dj) and Miley Cyrus (tinyurl.com/bzte8z) railing against the band for supposedly snubbing them at the Grammy Awards. The kerfuffle prompted Thom Yorke to briefly address matters at hand while writing about the band's upcoming South American tour on their website, radiohead.com/deadairspace: "Wish us all a safe journey if you still like us and you're not one of those people i have managed to offend by doing nothing xx..."

Rye Rye arrives

The young Baltimore rapper Rye Rye is probably best known for her frenetic backing vocals and occasional dancing during MIA's live shows. Now jointly signed to Interscope records and MIA's label N.E.E.T, she seems ready to step into the limelight. An album is said to be on the way, but in the meantime we must make do with a solitary new song. Combining a propulsive drum loop, backing vocals from MIA and Rye Rye's own confident, high-pitched flow, "Bang" is an impressive statement of intent. The song is on her Myspace (myspace.com/tharealryerye) with streams of some earlier efforts and a brief video of her displaying some eye-catching dance moves.

Bath blues

Kill It Kid, a five-piece from Bath, blend blues, country rock and pop – with a tip of the hat to Chris Turpin for his distinctive vocals (myspace.com/killitkid). They are now signed to One Little Indian and the debut single "Send Me an Angel Down" is due in May, with a full album due out later this year. Two songs from their debut EP are free to download from the 'Independent' music blog at independent.co.uk/mixtape.

Music radio? The Yanks are the stars

NPR is America's public broadcasting radio station, and the music strand of its website is an indispensable destination (npr.org/music/). It serves up a vibrant cross-section of genres with streams of entire new albums – currently featured is Dan Deacon's 'Bromst' – and podcast recordings of live concerts and studio sessions. The Discover Songs section offers introductions to a range of music, with daily audio streams of songs new and old.

Hidden gems

While the dust settles on Google/ YouTube's royalties spat with the Performing Rights Society, there are other places to watch music videos online. Dailymotion.com and Vimeo.com offer a similar service to YouTube, albeit not as comprehensive. Vimeo.com is the nicer-looking site, while Dailymotion. com has a greater breadth of videos.

VBS.com is a good source for videos of a left-of-centre vein; look out for rapper Azeem's oddly animated video for "Latin Revenge" (tinyurl.com/dfcdrq); a cool tune and a good video.

Pitchfork.com has now fully integrated its online music TV wing, Pitchfork.tv, into the main site. The site has a vast and still growing bank of music videos (pitchfork.com/).