The telling line comes at the end of the clip, after the two nattily dressed young men have been abandoned by the boxer with his python-thick arms, the Lilliputian couple clutching a globe, the little girl in the blinding white wig and the rest of their roving party of companions.

The scene’s taken from “The Overture,” a six-minute short film set in what looks like some old Western town that Vegas-born pop rockers Panic! at the Disco recently released in advance of their new record “Vices & Virtues,” their third disc overall, which came out on Tuesday.

At its conclusion, singer Brendon Urie turns to his bandmate, drummer Spencer Smith, as they are about to embark on some unspoken journey, just the two of them, the rest of their motley crew having fallen off. Read the full article »

It takes about one minute to walk from the Palms’ casino floor to its recording studio. Yet, tourists and locals never know that just a few walls separate them from the secretive Studio at the Palms, where Alicia Keys, Dave Matthews and a steady stream of stars write new music, day and night.

The Studio is such a hidden place that, over the course of a few years, even Michael Jackson recorded two sessions at the hectic Palms, for weeks at a stretch, clandestinely.

[...] Many musicians now record on home studios, or they stick with their hometown studios in New York, L.A. and Nashville. But since opening in 2005, the Studio has snared Timbaland, LL Cool J, Gym Class Heroes, Journey, Death Cab for Cutie, Regina Spektor, Gavin Rossdale, Mary J. Blige, Will.I.Am, Elton John, Britney Spears, Tony Bennett, Diddy, Chevelle, Ciara, Ludacris, the Killers, and on and on. Read the full article »

Pretty. Odd. comes out in vinyl today. It is limited to 2.500 copies and being sold at the FBR Webstore for $13.

Panic at the Disco and Alex Kirzhner were nominated for a Grammy in the Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package category for their art direction on Pretty. Odd.. Unfortunately they did not win, Radiohead’s In Rainbows received the non-televised award this year.

Pretty. Odd. will be released in vinyl on February 10th and it’s now up for pre-order at the FBR Webstore, the LP costs $13.00 and is limited to 2,500 copies. Or, you can still order the Deluxe Edition at a discounted price of $34.99, with that you will receive the vinyl, CD, DVD and special packaging.

For the consecutive year, a Panic At The Disco album has been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package category. The band is listed as art directors alongside Alex Kirzhner for the creation of Pretty. Odd.‘s Deluxe Edition — ensuring them a hand on that Grammy in case of a win.

The nominees are…

Ghosts I-IV
Trent Reznor & Rob Sheridan, art directors (Nine Inch Nails)

In Rainbows
Stanley Donwood, Mel Maxwell & Xian Munro, art directors (Radiohead)

Poems & Songs
Qing-Yang Xiao, art director (Wu Sheng)

Pretty. Odd.
Alex Kirzhner & Panic At The Disco, art directors (Panic At The Disco)

@#%&*! Smilers
Aimee Mann & Gail Marowitz, art directors (Aimee Mann)

Bassist Jon Walker joined Panic at the Disco in 2007, replacing original bassist Brent Wilson. Previously, the band had released the CD “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out.”

Panic at the Disco’s new CD, “Pretty. Odd.,” marks Walker’s recording debut with the band, which includes vocalist Brandon Urie, lead guitarist Ryan Ross and drummer Spencer Smith.

“It was a great experience for me,” Walker said during a phone call from his home in Illinois.

The band hired producer Rob Mathes to help it through various hoops and challenges.

“It was the first time I worked with an outside producer,” said Walker. “And we have all heard those stories where the producer becomes the dictator or doesn’t do jack. But Rob brought everything to us. He has a knack for working out the arrangements of songs. Read the full article »

From the moment that Panic at the Disco stepped onto the music scene, panic ensued with captivated audiences everywhere. The band continues to entrance their audiences with their talent, charisma, and a sound all their own. With their second studio release, the band has redefined what a rock band can sound like and the result is Pretty. Odd., a project that was partly recorded at the historic Abbey Road Studios under the direction of famed producer Rob Mathes. The music is an amalgamation of many genres, a departure from their debut that demonstrates the inexorable evolution of their. The band headlined at this year’s Bamboozle and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. Although busy on tour and making TV appearances, frontman Brendon Urie talks to PopMatters about this and beyond.

With Pretty. Odd. the band was not concerned with succumbing to the pressures of living up to the success of their debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, as Urie discussed. “I guess people would expect from the first album’s success, that we would have some pressure, or whatnot, or more of an expectation. But, I guess we just kind of threw that out the window and really focused on what made us happy—writing and the songs that interested us at that time. That’s always been the goal of this band. We want to do something that we’re happy with and as long as that happens, we’re ok.” Read the full article »

US band Panic at the Disco have been giving Newsbeat the low-down on recording their second album, Pretty. Odd. and how they came to be hanging out backstage with rap legend Snoop Dogg. The Las Vegas Emo rockers, signed to Fall Out Boy’s record label, also give their verdict on the UK festival circuit.

Has your new album Pretty. Odd. put the ‘emo’ tag attached to you to bed?

We haven’t been asked about that in a long time. With this new record our main goal was to make people open their eyes and view us as a band and not really as a specific trend.

You spent 10 days recording Pretty. Odd. at Abbey Road studios in London. What was that like?

We spent some time in Studio 3 where a lot of great records have been produced – Pink Floyd and Radiohead and all kinds of stuff. It’s definitely cool but that aside it’s still a great studio on its own. The people who work there are really generous and always willing to help out. And the equipment they have is awesome too so it was a lot of fun. Read the full article »

In the calm of a Boston dressing room, Panic at the Disco preview their imminent Glastonbury appearance by bringing up their most notable performance at a British festival: at their Reading appearance in 2006, frontman Brendon Urie was knocked out by a bottle. “It hit me right on the temple and I just kinda blacked out,” he says, recalling how he recovered to find his entourage fearing that he was dead. “I just said to the band, ‘This is weird. Keep playing!’”

They did, the boos turned to cheers and the young band won over the crowd. All of which seems par for the course in Panic at the Disco’s career: Kerrang! magazine once voted them best and worst band of the same year; NME dubbed them the worst band of 2007 but now likes them enough to put them on its cover.

Panic’s latest challenge is to win over their own audience. Their debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, sold 2.2m copies following its 2005 release, establishing the Las Vegas quartet as the rising stars of emo. But the follow up, Pretty. Odd., has seen Panic take a curious career swerve into classic 60s rock. Though it entered the charts at No 2, and has sold 600,000 copies, it has sold more slowly than its predecessor on both sides of the Atlantic, suggesting that a youth subculture associated with self-harm and teenage alienation is struggling to come to terms with songs that owe more to the Beach Boys and the Beatles than to My Chemical Romance. Read the full article »