The All Points West Music & Arts Festival kicks off today in New Jersey with a stellar mix of indie bands and mainstream giants. From Chairlift to Coldplay, the Ting Tings to Tool, this is the kind of lineup that will keep everyone satisfied.

Sadly, the Beastie Boys were forced to cancel their headlining slot tonight due to MCA’s recent cancer diagnosis. As he is known to do, Jay-Z stepped up to help out while Yauch undergoes surgery for the treatable illness. Also performing are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the National, Vampire Weekend, Q-Tip, Organized Konfusion and MSTRKRFT, just to name a few.

Saturday highlights include Tool, My Bloody Valentine, Gogol Bordello, Artic Monkeys, Neko Case, Kool Keith and more. Sunday is a bit more laid back with Coldplay headlining, in addition to Echo & the Bunnymen, MGMT, The Black Keys, Mogwai, We Are Scientists and Lykke Li.

Electric Touch have always dreamed of imitating their music idols by playing a big stage, and this weekend they’ll get the chance to rock an enormous crowd. Good luck guys!

Time to grab a flashlight and head to UI’s basement to see what’s buried in our boxes. Per usual, we’re rifling through our treasure trove of interviews to Flashion Backward and fish out a vintage gem–the better to explore the strange vortex in which fashion and musicians meet. Today we’re in for a unique treat.

Where do we begin with this dapper gentleman, this…Lightspeed Champion? The colorful palette from which he dips his idiosyncratic brush before painting his chiaroscuro portrait of life is multi-hued indeed. The British composer and songwriter is a musical chameleon (is he dance-punk? A classicist? A soul man?).

Not that it really matters–whether he’s penning comic books, dressing up like Princess Leia, striking dour poses with lawn furniture, writing for the Chemical Brothers, or strapping on a Bill Cosby ski sweater circa 1982 and some sort of headgear that appears to be the stitched together from the hide of some sort of wily urban mammal, Lightspeed Champion is an all-around ass-kicking wonder.

And to be fair, he may be just as confused as the rest of us. When contemplating whose ass he’d most like to kick (why does he spend time contemplating such things? Even he isn’t sure), he’d totally choose Screech’s over Bob Dylan or Kurt Cobain. Why? This is not a query one can pose to a man who regularly straps a dead raccoon (rat? rerret?) to his head and goes about his business.

Welcome to Six Degrees, a new Uncensored Interview feature inspired by none other than Mr. Kevin Bacon. You know the game–it’s a small world and we’re all somehow related. This theory applies to the music scene as well, no matter what you listen to, where you hang or who you know. We’re just showing you the connections.

So what’s the one place most everyone can escape the sticky hot summer heat? The movie theatre. Whether catching a matinee during the blazing mid-afternoon sun or spreading out on a blanket with friends for a night out at a park screening, catching a movie is what summer’s all about when you’re all summered out.

Whether you’re still buzzing about Transformers, looking forward to G.I. Joe or just want to catch an indie flick, our Uncensored artists can give you their summer cinema recommendations.

Juliette Lewis is not only a badass lead singer, but an accomplished actor, too. She recommends checking out the works of Federico Fellini.

Speaking of cool chicks who can act and sing, Locksley’s done some mingling with ScarJo.

So Locksley once opened for Ray Davies, pal of Sir Paul McCartney, whom The Stills once opened up for. Here they explain their film noir-ish name given to them by an Ethiopian friend who is an American film buff.

Strap on your fave giant silver wraparound shades–we’re Flashion Forwarding to a magical aesthetic land through which we coquettishly zip about the closets of our fave new UI-ers. Each week we pluck a recently added interview from our warehouse of current clips and try to read between the artist’s sartorial lines. Today, we’re gazing at a Moby, a bright, shining and seemingly permanent lodestar in downtown Manhattan’s increasingly peripatetic firmament.

Richard Melville Hall is a former vegan restaurateur, dedicated blogger, full-time DJ razzle-dazzler and polymath (he plays the keyboard, guitar, bass and drums). His musical style comfortably defies categorization, straddling dance, downtempo trance, git-tar strumming some atmospheric tunage and futuristic shreiks that somehow manages to sound like a beautifully tuned wail of a destitute, ship-wrecked maiden, not the howling death throes of an addled over-the-hill club-lander.

The strangest thing about Moby is how resolutely normal he appears to be. Generally opting to don downbeat gray and black ensembles that could just as easily hail from JC Penney’s as American Apparel, he resembles your favorite college Modern Lit professor or a left-wing Washington, D.C. lobbyist more than he does a genre-busting 40-something DJ. And that’s just part and parcel of the whole mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma thang that is Moby. Just when his most ardent fans prepare to rend their garments and mourn his sellout to the masses, he does something like open a café on Manhattan’s lower east side that offers 98 varieties of loose-leaf tea–in addition to accouterments for “your tea lifestyle.”

Or…launches into a diatribe against the perils of selling out (while admitting to the very human impulses even he suffers from to do just that). Because the thing is? Just like his buddy David Lynch’s work, Moby’s music will not always be loved or understood (even by his loyal fan base), but in the end, he doesn’t give a shit. It’s all about the journey to finding the beauty. Draw a cup of chamomile and join the be-hoodied, three-day-bearded wonder in thinking deep thoughts about the true meaning of life, creation and commerce below.

Everyone seems to love the dark charm of director David Lynch. From “Twin Peaks” to Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Blue Velvet or Inland Empire, chances are you’ve seen his work. We’ve noticed dozens of musicians going gaga over Lynch lately, perhaps due in no small part to his recent collaborations with artists like Moby, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse (Dark Night of the Soul) or even his own 2001 rock album with John Neff (BlueBob).

And that’s not to mention The Beatles half-reunion with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr held earlier this year as a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation. That’s right, The Beatles gave Lynch the homie hook up. Other performers included Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper and Mike Love of the Beach Boys.

Lynch is multi-talented and widely respected for good reason. Hear a few Uncensored artists spill the beans on their collaborations with and/or crushes on the man himself.

5. Au Revoir Simone played a show Lynch put together in honor of Eraserhead. Sounds like the stage was no ordinary mics-and-monitors set up.

4. Brazilian Girls were inspired by Lynch’s commitment to transcendental meditation. He’s long touted its benefits and has put his money where his mouth is by starting a program to help at-risk youth learn to meditate.

3. Conversely, Metric dig Lynch up until the meditation stuff. They get their cosmic experiences through his film work instead.

(MORE LYNCH LOVE HERE)

The streets are giddily buzzing about Stockholm-based Those Dancing Days. Named after a Led Zeppelin song, the indie-pop quintet banded together in 2005 as five chicks ready to rock. But they’re far, far from the death metal Sweden has been exporting the past 10 years. Quite the opposite in fact: SPIN.com described them as “Blondie backed by the Attractions.”

The band was featured in NME and appeared on MTV2, while also nominated for Best Swedish Act at the 2007 MTV Europe Music Awards, all before their debut, In Our Space Hero Suits, was released the following year. These are some impressive kvinnor, know what I’m saying?

The band’s syrupy-sweet songs are charming and introspective. “Hitten” explores the topic we all wonder about–where our lives are headed–without being a mope-fest. “Discho’” is campy fun, with bopping organ and bass lines that makes lead singer Linnea Jonsson “just wanna disco.” “Home Sweet Home” hints at punk rock before launching into an almost-mod jam that longs for the comforts of the familiar.

Those Dancing Days have a few shows coming up, mostly in Europe, and perhaps they’ll hit the States soon. As you can imagine, their pre-show rituals aren’t exactly locker room grunt-filled hype sessions, but they do the trick.

Los Angeles-based Princeton are hitting the road this fall in support of their new album, Cocoon of Love, out September 29 via Kanine Records. The cross-country trek includes dates with The Noisettes, Ice Palace, Ra Ra Riot, Phil and the Osophers and Maps and Atlases, and they’ll be wrapping things up in Boston by October. Check all the dates and hear the first single “Calypso Gold” on their MySpace page.

And though Princeton officially formed in 2005, there are much earlier versions of the guys–ones they’d like to punch.