So, we have a new book out, The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present, published by the Simon & Schuster imprint Fireside Books. It explores our 500 favorite songs from 1977-2006-- interspersed with sidebars on the most vital subgenres from electro to grime to riot grrrl-- to construct an alternate history of the past three decades of popular music. In the coming weeks we'll be posting streams of tracks from the book here in Forkcast and giving you a sneak peek at some of the entries. 

If you're in Brooklyn, please come out for the The Pitchfork 500 launch party on Wednesday, November 26. Dance and bowl (yes, bowl) to selections from the book at The Gutter Bar, located at 200 N. 14th St. (between Wythe and Berry) in Williamsburg. We'll be there from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., there's no cover, and there will be books for sale. For a complete rundown of events, check www.thepitchfork500.com.

The Pitchfork 500 is available in your local bookstore right now (Quimby's is the shop in our Chicago neighborhood). Or you can order it via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Insound, Powells, or Simon & Schuster.

And now, here's Mark Richardson on Panda Bear's "Bros", with a stream (good for one free play every 24 hours, via Lala) below the text.

Photo by Petra Niemeier/Redferns

It's funny how anything nice and just out of one's price range becomes "the perfect holiday gift" this time of year, as all the stuff we don't really need becomes stuff we desperately want. Here's the next item to add to the covet list: Picture Book, the Kinks' very first box set. Sanctuary/Universal will release Picture Book on December 8.

Picture Book collects over 130 tracks across six chronologically ordered CDs, sprinkling rarities, live tracks, and demos (including early ones recorded under the name the Ravens) among the Kinks' classic singles and album tracks. The accompanying 60-page booklet features a biography, a Kinks timeline, and previously unseen photos.

The whole thing was put together with the help of lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies, who recently sent Kinks fans into a tizzy when he told BBC News that a reunion might be in the cards. He said, "We've started a little bit of this and that. It depends if there's good music. We want good new music. I'd like to do it as a more collaborative thing than we used to do." No word on who, exactly "we" is, since Ray's brother/former bandmate Dave Davies still seems to hate Ray's guts, as Billboard.com pointed out.

Ray Davies also told BBC News that he'd like to put out a duets album featuring Chuck Berry, Snow Patrol, and Johnny Borrell from Razorlight. To which we say: No. Please don't.

For now, Davies has some U.S. tour dates starting November 28 in Tampa, Florida. The band Locksley will both act as Davies' backing band as well as open all of the shows.

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I've been waiting for a new jack swing revival ever since I learned that the Boyz II Men and Hi-Five tapes I loved were part of something called "new jack swing," but as great as this year's Gold: New Jack Swing compilation is, any such revival would probably be ill-advised. The title of Brooklyn "thug-house" DJ/producer Dances With White Girls' just-released debut EP for the Rapture's Throne of Blood label is New Crack Swing-- a much better fit for this epoch of political hope and financial despair, at least based on this wildly diverse party banger, "Everyone's Got to Make a Living".

If new jack swing was a "hip-hop/r&b hybrid", then this New Crack Swing track-- like the Krudmart Mixtape or Chris Brown remix by Alaska's Curtis Vodka-- throws in elements of house, too. Sorry, Snap! fans: We're not quite talking hip-house, but at the outset we're not that far off. Built around a line familiar from "Jenny From the Block" (originally sampled from the 20th Century Steel Band's "Heaven and Hell Is on Earth"), "Everyone's Got to Make a Living" starts with bare beats and a soulful falsetto vocal, then picks up block-rockin' buzz, piano house keys, synth arpeggios fit for Giorgio Moroder, and finally some African-style group vocals, as if anticipating its own Panda Bear remix. Dances With White Girls may still be DJ Frog from Philly, but based on this song from the New Crack Swing EP, you'll be happy to be fooled by the rocks that he got.

MP3:> Dances With White Girls: "Everyone's Got to Make a Living"

[from the New Crack Swing EP; out now on Throne of Blood]