5. Basement Jaxx - "Make Me Sweat"
While last year’s Crazy Itch Radio was a bit of a disappointment (and with many critics saying Timbaland is doing their thing better than they are) the Jaxx remind us of their genius by tossing off this throwaway single, a straightforward, stomping number that throws the ball back in Timbo’s court

4. 30 Rock (Thursdays on NBC)
I put a bunch of the most recent episodes on the iPod for my flight back from NYC, and it almost made the overcrowded, delayed, crying-child-filled flight bearable. It seemed like the show got off to a bit of a rough start, but at this point, the most bizarre, hilarious stuff comes rolling out effortlessly – the one where they’re trying and repeatedly failing to defuse an apparently anti-American slipup by one of their cast (whoops, swastika sparklers!) continually shocked me with what they were getting away with

3. Jeff Wall, MOMA, New York (through May 14th)
This exhibit of the artist’s large-scale back-lit photographs of oddly staged landscapes and weird “dead zones” are clearly modern, but strangely elegant, and after walking through the video-wall overload of Times Square, unexpectedly traditionalist. While I’m not enough of an art student to know the paintings he’s often referencing, the scenes depict ugliness beautifully, like 1993’s A Sudden Gust of Wind, where pink papers fly into the air over a polluted canal

2. DJ Khaled - "We Takin' Over"
Via Sasha Frere-Jones' blog, it’s a South florida rapper with track that sounds like just like how I imagine Florida feels like (I've never been) – an uptempo freestyle beat, and over the top of it, a high-speed slippery vocal that makes it all sound so, so easy

1. LCD Soundsystem, live at the Bowery, New York City, Saturday, March 31st
Is James Murphy the indie rock James Brown? Like the late funk soul brother's music, LCD’s spare funkiness requires absolute precision, and while Murphy comes off like a geeky, easygoing slacker, he’s obviously a brilliant vocalist and musician, as well as a whip-cracking band leader. Stepping over for a stage-left drum-pad solo during “Tribulations,” he hit the syncopated claps with such exactitude, I thought it was just a drum machine at first; and his goofy yelps during “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” were always right on the octave. He said he had the flu, but I never noticed