• Unhinged Seattle noise-rock duo MTNS are collaborating with Olympia-based mad-genius vocalist/bass clarinetist Arrington de Dionyso (Malakait dan Singa), with a release tentatively slated for spring on K Records. Great fellow K artist Angelo Spencer is also involved in this project. If all goes according to plan, MTNS and de Dionyso will tour next summer.
• The Blue Moon in the U-District was packed last Friday night with happy fans of Malpractice, a countrified band made up mostly of UW medical students. They started a bit late—so sue them.
• The Recording Academy has nominated Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for seven Grammy Awards, including album of the year for The Heist, song of the year for "Same Love," and best new artist for Ryan Lewis's beautiful eyes.
• Macaulay Culkin, who currently looks a lot like Kid Rock and that guy from Sons of Anarchy, has formed a pizza-themed Velvet Underground tribute band called—are you sitting down?—the Pizza Underground. Their Bandcamp offers nine songs, titled "Papa John Says," "I'm Beginning to Eat the Slice," "Pizza," "I'm Waiting for Delivery Man," "Cheese Days," Pizza Day," "All the Pizza Parties," "Pizza Gal," and "Take a Bite of the Wild Side."
• Pearl Jam played their first hometown show in years at KeyArena on Friday, shredding through more than 35 songs in three hours. An animated Eddie Vedder entertained the crowd with stories of some of the songs' backstories, urged his fans to donate more than Macklemore's fans to the Orion Center, and swung from a giant lightbulb. Around the 25th encore, Vedder invited Mudhoney's (the opening band of this highly Seattle show) Mark Arm and Steve Turner with Soundgarden's Kim Thayil to play "Search and Destroy." And then the Space Needle held hands with the Pike Place Market sign while they shared a pumpkin-spice Starbucks.
• Rumor has it that a local and emerging rap group received an e-mail from a prominent grocery chain that rhymes with Gator Bro's that threatened legal action for the use of one of their stores in a music video. The rap group promptly removed the video from the interwebs.
• Money king Jay-Z announced via his blog last week that on December 3 (the day before his 44th birthday) he and Beyoncé would adopt a vegan diet for 22 days, explaining, confusingly, "There's something spiritual to me about it being my 44th birthday and the serendipity behind the number of days in this challenge; 22 (2+2=4) coupled with the fact that the challenge ends on Christmas day... It just feels right!" We'd wish them good luck, but come on, with enough money and a private chef, you could convert to an all-cat-food diet pretty easily. 
