After a three year hiatus, The Strokes will take the stage next summer at the Isle of Wight Festival in the UK. Jay-Z, Blondie, Pink, Orbital and Squeeze will also play during the three-day festival June 11-13, 2010. A final headliner will soon be announced, and tickets go on sale Friday December 4.

First held in 1968, the festival drew an estimate of over 600,000 people in its third year. As a result of the cramped event, Parliament passed the Isle of Wight bill in 1971, banning crowds of over 5,000 on the island without a special license. Revived in 2002, the festival now attracts 55,000 music fans. Past performers include The Rolling Stones, Muse, Ray Davies, David Bowie and The Police.

Not that playing the UK to get people talking is a new strategy for The Strokes. They’ve been working that angle (successfully) for quite some time.

Flashioning Backward through UI’s archives is like paging through your old middle school yearbook. What the f*ck were we/they/the vast universe thinking? Today, we’ve stumbled upon fragments of Poingly’s past. Will we laugh and point?

Doubtful. The one-man electroclasher Poingly band from BK, NY generally supplies the laughter and pointing himself (whether he’s the subject of it or not) whenever the need arises, ingeniously annihilating anyone else’s L&P power.

Poingly’s trickiness doesn’t stop there: The avant garde outré mask-wearing wacko has been thrilling and frightening the trembling Billyburg indie set since 2002 when he busted onto the scene with projects alongside The Hissyfits and solo work that earned him a spot at CMJ’s Music Marathon way back in 2004.

Lauded for his self-described laptop rock, the Poingster enjoys wailing and writhing along to pre-recorded tracks–much to the simultaneous joy, consternation and amusement of listeners and gawkers–which always “involve a lot of sweat, silly costumes, a fair amount of audience participation, semi-nudity and a lot of shrieking.”

Perhaps it’s Poingly’s existential, Ginsbergian Howl against the banality, self-imposed hypocrisy and cluelessness inherent in too much of the Billyburg hipster lifestyle.

Below, check out his strikingly cogent take on the anti-gentrification sentiment in New York City–by the gentrifiers themselves. Once you get past the wigs, the pasty boob shots and the interesting leg gear, you’ll find a Zen Buddhist waiting to gently slap the smugness off your mug. (Full disclosure: Poingly is a former UI blogger, too. True renaissance man, no? Hey Poingly, call us sometime!)

The first round of bands scheduled to play SXSW next year includes Deer Tick, The Uglysuit, Princeton, Nicole Atkins and The Black Sea, Frightened Rabbit, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Psalm One, Japandroids, The Pack A.D., 9th Wonder and nearly 200 more. The fest goes down March 17-21, 2010 in Austin, TX. If you’re into the film or interactive worlds, both of those parts of the festival kick off March 12.

Alongside hundreds of performances and parties, those trekking down to the Lone Star state can also catch panels, films, mentoring sessions and some of the coolest poster art ever made. Smokey Robinson is the keynote speaker.

It’s never too early to get excited. The Duke Spirit are.

Before we officially strap on our feed pants for the holidays, let’s slip into our pimped out time machine for one more Flashion Forward. Your hypothesis is correct, Captain: It’s time to strut our sartorial stuff and dive into fashion’s future, as well as the closets of UI’s fanciest, freshest new interviewees.

Today’s musings begin with Michael Cerveris, a polymath performer who is as comfortable on strutting his stuff on stage with a guitar as he is sans–a rock ‘n’ roller who does Broadway. Now before you whip out the barf bags, consider this: Dude got his start in the TV series “Fame.” Wait…It’s not as inauspicious as it sounds. Well maybe it is, but all’s well that ends well, right?

When he’s not busy being nominated for Tony Awards for his performances in “The Who’s Tommy,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Assassins” or “LoveMusik,” he’s fronting the Brit band Retriever, playing in Bob Mould’s band or cranking out solo albums with guest appearances from Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub, members of Sleater-Kinney, Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, Kevin March of Guided by Voices and many, many more.

But what really makes Cerveris awesome is not his highly laudable film, stage and musical career. No. It’s much deeper than that. Cerveris, a pale and pasty fellow who sports eclectic pinky rings, favors wacky, dark-colored ensembles and bears a rage-tinged, yet soulful gaze that a loving, slightly delusional mom might describe as “intense,” fully groks the connection between vampires and the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

It’s more than aspirational goth–it’s the desire to rise late and wreak havoc late into the night; it’s an insistence on grappling with the dark side of life, come what may; it’s intravenous drug use; it’s an almost instinctively spot-on Zeitgeisty fashion sense! Check out Cerveris’ well-thought out diatribe below.

And if nothing else, I hope you take in FF’s lesson of the day: Perhaps in 20 years Miley Cyrus will have an awesome fashion sense and a kick ass, hipster-approved career!

Idle Warship–the group composed of Talib Kweli, Res and Graph Nobel–is giving away its debut mixtape, Party Robot. Produced by Mick Boogie (Kidz in the Hall), the group has been releasing singles since 2008 and working together for much longer (Res has appeared on several of Talib’s albums). No word on any live shows (New Yorkers can catch them at Southpaw November 28), but we’re just happy to see Res in action again. A word from the group:

“Idle Warship welcomes you to our first full length offering, Party Robot. This started out as a path to musical freedom. When we established Idle Warship, we did it for us. Now that we are giving you this music, Idle Warship no longer belongs to us, it belongs to the world. We don’t believe in labels for music. Labels may stop you from hearing something before you listen to it. We appreciate those who have taken this journey with us without judgment and enjoyed the ride. To everyone who purchased our music on iTunes and anyone who has bought a ticket to an Idle Warship show, this is for you. All my party robots stand up!“

Download: Idle Warship’s Party Robot.

The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is scheduled for June 10-13, 2010 in Manchester, Tenn. The lineup will be announced early next year, and presale tickets will be available starting Friday November 27. And for those of you who don’t want to spend all your holiday cash quite yet, payment plans can be made in $50 installments.

Held on a 700-acre farm every year since 2002, Billboard estimates 80,000 people attended the fest in 2009. Phish and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band headlined the fest, curated in part by David Byrne. Plenty of UI artists also played, including Chairlift, Hockey, Aaron LaCrate, Girl Talk, Kaki King, Justin Townes Earle, Heartless Bastards and many more.

Though the lineup is all speculation at this time, The Knux can guarantee it’ll be a good time.

So the lead singer’s probably not going to erupt onto the stage from a mysterious cloud of smoke, nor will there be any crazy pyrotechnics (on purpose anyway), but that’s sort of the beauty of shoegaze; your attention should be on the music.

And while most associate the genre with late ’80s/early ’90s bands like My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, today there are plenty of  bands carrying on the torch, with fuzzy, distorted guitars turned way up. And you know what? They’re all connected in a little game we and our pal Kevin Bacon like to call Six Degrees.

We kick things off with A Place to Bury Strangers, who describe the second generation of shoegaze bands, like Curve and Swervedriver (more on them later).

Also based in Brooklyn, Crystal Stilts may be considered shoegaze to some, but they recognize the benefit of blending categories.

Speaking of bands on the same bill, Crystal Stilts have played shows with Titus Andronicus, who lovingly refer to the scene as “shitgaze.”