After Hefner broke up, Darren Haymen did a lot of forgetable things. But now he's back - sharp, witty and charming as ever. It’s probably because he is kinda doing Hefner songs again.

Let me start off with an off-topic explanation – I know that lately we haven’t been updating the music blog as much as we used to. I’m sorry about that. But let me assure you that soon enough we will be right back on track! What can we say? 8hands is growing, and you can expect a lot of surprises from us in the near future – site wise and app wise. Things will just get better round here! Now, let’s start talking about da man, Darren Hayman.

Most of you will probably know Darren Hayman from the astonishing work that he did while he was the lead singer of Hefner. If you ever heard anything by Hefner, you probably fell in love with Hayman’s endless geeky charm, his perfect voice, and of course, his way with words. He had this magical ability to deliver purely cynical thoughts, without a trace of anger or bitterness.

But not everything about Hefner was perfect. They had three brilliant pop-folk-rock studio albums and a ton of b-sides before they have decided, like the rest of the world in those 2001 days, to try their luck with synths and electronics. They brought us ‘Dead Media’ – one hell of a boring album, and probably the cause of the Hefner’s threesome going their separate and unknown ways. The only one I’ve tried to follow was Darren Hayman.

At first he went to a project called The French – another electronic outfit, which released a decent album, but didn’t leave any real marker except from that one “Wu-Tang Clan” song (can’t find it to put it here legally for ya, but look for it or buy it. It’s an amzing song). Sadly, it kinda went down the hill from there.

Hayman started to put out lots of solo releases: eps, 7 inches, even an album – alone, all by himself, recorded at home without a backing band. That’s when I got it! Apparently, Hayman isn’t the bedroom-singer-songwriter we thought he was. When he was alone, the songs didn’t sound right, too much was missing. Around the beginning of 2006, I’d lost hope and stopped trying. I thought to myself, “We will always have Hefner”, and popped ‘The Fidelity Wars’ in the stereo. Only god knows what made me google Hayman’s name a few weeks ago.

I found out that by the end of 2007, Hayman released a new album, with a band! The band's name is Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern and the album’s title is just the same. And how is the music? Awesome! Haymen is back to guitars, back to what he does best, back to… doing Hefner!

I mean… I love electronics, and I appreciate it when musicians try out new stuff. I really do. But when it comes to Hayman, I just want him to deliver those great lyrics over some beautiful catchy and melodically soft rockn’roll, and that is exactly what happens in Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern. So, if you ever had a soft place in your heart for Hefner (and I assume you did, after all, you are not robots!) you will love this new album. Just trust me on this one.

I guess it's not news anymore. Heath is dead. The magazine covers are out, the obituaries written, the autopsy report is on its way, and the YouTube tributes are a flowin'. Even Daniel Day Lewis already dedicated his SAG award to the man. I meant to write this post earlier. But I kept giving myself excuses: "It's my birthday," "First, I need to watch I'm Not There. Then I need to rent Candy…"

And the more I put it off, the more I knew that there's nothing that I can really say that you don't already know or feel. What's gotten to me most, though, is how much his death has struck a cord online. I don't remember ever seeing a collective grief ever expressed quite so - with the gossip rags and elite newspapers weighing in, video memorials, Facebook fansite pages, and comments (oh, how many comments!) on anything that is even remotely related to Heath Ledger. I guess online we're allowed to wallow, get sappy, and lament in the privacy of our very public lives online.

So, a second before Heath officially becomes an icon and we lose all sense of proportion, I'll put forth my little tribute, and share a few of my faves from his past, present, and not too distant future.

The Past: Lords of Dogtown. A truly underappreciated classic. This film (along with Monster's Ball) is one of the first movies that I really started to notice Heath; his rooftap party scene rant is an all time fave. An early Emile Hirsch is amazing here as well.

The Present: I'm Not There. An amazing and eerily prescient performance. Alon hated this movie, but admitted that the only Bob Dylan could relate to was Heath's. I can't wait to see it again.

The Future: Batman – The Dark Knight. Let's hope this isn't the movie that killed him. It already looks like a legendary performance.

You know, I once thought that the news was sacred. I guess that all ended with Borat's foray onto that infamous Jackson, Mississippi weather forecast screen. And now that we can finally acknowledge the fact that the local news and E! News Daily have a bit too much in common, I say we rejoice and Sing Hallelujah!

I mean, how else would we learn about 16 year old Mr. Corey Worthington? The boy held "an alcohol fueled party for hundreds of kids while his unsuspecting parents were on holiday." A hero to all, Corey sticks by his guns, refusing to apologize or to take off his glasses on national television. Now that's what I call a hero.

Oh, and there's more! Reporters caught up with him later that day, avoiding his parents while soakin' up some rays at the beach.

Last year The Holgasnake gave me my first holga. For about a month it sat on my shelf. It had been years since I had touched a film camera, and my last digital camera was so bad, that I had stopped taking pictures all together. And then one day Ms. Holgasnake came over, took the holga out, showed me how to load film, post on flickr, and pushed me off the diving board into a whole new life. Seriously.

The Holgasnake is also one of my favorite photographers. She has this uncanny ability to give the most banal object a haunting beauty. Her street shots of Los Angeles are like no other and she is a master of the double exposure. We can all learn a lot from The Holgasnake, I know I have.

To see more from The Holgasnake, click here.

Ok, I'm not gonna write a 10 million words post just to explain why Xiu Xiu is one of the best bands in the world. We all know that Jamie Stewart is a genius, we all remember the brilliant former album, "The Air Force".

All I'm about to do is to let you people know – the ones who somehow missed it – that Xiu Xiu will be back with a new album by the end of the month. The shiny album will be called "Women as Lovers" and the first single, "I Do What I Want When I Want" is already out there and as you probably assumed, is beautiful.

You can download the full song here or just watch the official video for it, which is just my idea of art. Spectacular!

Edit: The all-mighty Alice just told me that Xiu Xiu are letting us stream-listen their whole new album in their MySpace page. Double SWEEEET!