Laid back California stoner-hop duo Shwayze are this week’s featured artist at the Breaking blog. Cisco Adler and Shwayze have concocted a feel-good blend of sun-kissed pop and cheeky rapping on their breakout hit “Buzzin’” and their MTV reality show of the same name. Click below for more on Shwayze, including the video for their new single “Corona and Lime.”

• Breaking: Shwayze

The Internet is a tornado, which is why the Breaking blog has Hype Monitor as its designated storm chaser, cutting through the wind and rain for the brilliance at the eye. Click below for this week’s column featuring Hospital Ships, a band from Kansas who put a psychedelic spin on scratchy, low-fi folk.

• Hype Monitor: Hospital Ships, Marching Band and Women

This week’s featured artist on the RollingStone.com Breaking blog is the War on Drugs, a low-fi folk rock quintet from Philadelphia. Their stunning album Wagonwheel Blues is full gentle, moody folk tunes torn apart by jagged shards of noisy guitars. Click below for more on the War on Drugs, including how frontman Adam Granduciel gained access to so many microwaves and to watch an exclusive acoustic rendition of their song “Arms Like Boulders.”

• Breaking: The War on Drugs

This week’s featured Breaking Artist is Metro Station. Lead by Miley Cyrus‘ brother Trace, the band that splits the difference between sugary mall emo and Disney-fueled dance pop. Click below for more on Metro Station, including what retail jobs they gave up for rock stardom.

• Breaking Artist: Metro Station

Every week on the Breaking blog,
the Hype Monitor pans the riverbed of the Internet to find three bits of gold amidst the mud. Click below for the latest round-up, which includes the much-ballyhooed New Wave revivalists
Black Kids.

• Hype Monitor: Black Kids, Ida Maria and Sic Alps

This week’s featured artist on the Breaking blog is Brooklyn’s Love As Laughter, a band that has been kicking around in one form or another for 14 years. Click below to find out what job frontman Sam Jayne has to quit in order to go on tour and for an exclusive acoustic performance of “Babyshambles.”

• Breaking Artist: Love As Laughter

Every week on the Breaking blog, the Hype Monitor column takes cuts through the fatty tissue of Internet chatter and gets to the meat of the most buzzed about bands on the web. Click below for this week’s column, featuring Philadelphia country rock freaks the War on Drugs.

• Hype Monitor: The War on Drugs, Abe Vigoda and Nomo

[Photo courtesy of Secretly Canadian]

This week’s featured artist on the RollingStone.com Breaking blog is My Brightest Diamond. The band is the brainchild of Shara Worden, a classically-trained songwriter with a knack for pastoral moods and esoteric pop sensibilities. Click below for more on Worden, including what Tom Waits album inspired her new album A Thousand Sharks Teeth and for exclusive video of her performing “Inside a Boy” in New York’s Tompkins Square Park.

• Breaking: My Brightest Diamond

The Breaking blog is the source for new bands about to become household names. Every week, Hype Monitor casts a glance at the infinite cosmos that is the Internet and picks out the brightest stars in the blog sky. Click below for the lowdown on this week’s most buzzworthy groups, including Brooklyn girl group throwback Vivian Girls.

• Hype Monitor: Vivian Girls, Kudu and Blu & Exile

Over on the RollingStone.com Breaking blog, this week’s featured artist is Mason Jennings, the folk-centric acoustic strongman from Minnesota. Click below for more on Jennings, including where the title for his good vibe-heavy In the Ever came from and exclusive video of a performance at this year’s Bonnaroo.

• Breaking Artist: Mason Jennings

Every week on the Breaking blog, RollingStone.com cuts through the weeds of Internet hype to focus on the best buzzed-about artists in blogland. Click below for the inside scoop on Seinfeld-loving mixtape maestro Wale, Kanye West’s wheels of steel driver A-Trak and Fela Kuti’s drum-happy son Seun.

• Hype Monitor: Wale, A-Trak and Seun Kuti

Head on over to the Breaking blog for a look at this week’s featured artist the Presets, an Australian dance duo who add punk elements to their ’80s new wave grooves. Click below for more on the band plus an exclusive video performance of their song “My People.”

• Breaking: The Presets

Every week, RollingStone.com’s Hype Monitor hunts down the choicest game in the wild jungle of the Internet. Click below for illuminating insights on bohoemian electro-soulsters J*Davey, end-of-days rock preacher Dead Heart Bloom and orchestral pop wunderkind Chris Letcher.

• Hype Monitor: J*Davey, Dead Heart Bloom, Chris Letcher

Lykke Li is this week’s featured artist over at the Breaking blog. The Swedish chanteuse has been turning heads with the breathy vocals and sugary pop sensibility of her debut Young Novels. Click below for more on Lykke Li, including the origins of her dance style and clips from her video for “Little Bit.”

• Breaking Artist: Lykke Li

An exclusive stream of Alejandro Escovedo’s “Real as an Animal” is over on the Breaking Blog right now. The live track, taken from a performance on Sirius Satellite Radio, is a scorching take on a track from Escovedo’s new album Real Animal. Click below for the track and to check out the rest of the great new and under-the-radar bands on the Breaking Blog.

• Free Stream: Alejandro Escovedo’s “Real as an Animal”