• We are so excited to announce the 2014 Stranger Genius Award finalists in music: production wizard Erik Blood, jazz virtuoso quartet Industrial Revelation, and Amber Kai Morgan and Garrett Kelly, founders and tireless organizers of Hollow Earth Radio and Magma Festival. Congratulations! The winners will be announced at the Genius Awards ceremony, taking place October 18 at the Moore Theatre.

• Speaking of Genius nominees: The new album by 2012 Genius noms THEESatisfaction (Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White) is completed. It will be released by Sub Pop and has been mixed and engineered by Erik Blood (a nominee for this year's award, as you just learned). Stay tuned for its release later this year!

• Heavy and witty Seattle rock unit Kinski are recording a new album this August with the excellent Phil Manley (guitarist for Trans Am, Life Coach, Fucking Champs, etc.) producing. More details TBA.

• Speaking of Kinski, they opened last Thursday at Chop Suey for British psych-rock titans Loop, who were on the home stretch of their last ever world tour (sniff). Tearing through favorite tracks from throughout their too-brief existence, Loop picked right up where they left off when they disbanded 24 years ago. It was intense, throbbing trance rock of monomaniacal brilliance, concluding with a radioactive rendition of Can's "Mother Sky." Afterward, a drunken fan confessed to frontman Robert Hampson that he'd lost his virginity to his band's Fade Out album. Good-bye, Loop, and thanks for all the riffs.

• For their upcoming performance at Debacle Fest, Seattle electronic-rock group New Weather plan to base their set around samples culled from the catalog of legendary British prog-rock band Yes. There's no "Roundabout" way to say this: That is awesome.

• Sunday night's Billboard Music Awards broadcast will be forever remembered for its inclusion of dead Michael Jackson reanimated in creepy hologram form. While the result grossed out anyone with eyes, Michael Jackson would likely have enjoyed being onstage weighing zero pounds and constructed entirely of nonprosecutable light.

• Macklemore & Ryan Lewis surprised fans with a two-song set at the EMP on Friday. More surprising was Mack's, um, "disguise," which didn't sit well with many folks who said he looked as if he was mocking Jewish stereotypes in a black wig, beard, and giant prosthetic nose. While the Seattle Times was there and failed to notice, the internet pretty much exploded. And after some unfortunate equivocating on Twitter, Macklemore apologized, "truly" and fully. The end. recommended