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In addition to fronting two bands, producing a feature film and running his own online marketing company, Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge recently launched Strange Times, a website focused on extraterrestrial life, paranormal activity, cryptozoology, conspiracy theories and other otherworldly or non-mainstream topics. DeLonge told us how he first got into this subject matter: "In the seventh grade, I got super into just UFOS and weird paranormal stuff. I just thought it was madly interesting to me because basically all those studies and all these people talking about their experiences was letting me know that there was a much larger world out there. Even though we don't understand what it is, at least there was something bigger than the mundane kind of minutiae of our day-to-day lives." DeLonge explained to Noisecreep why he wanted to create the site, saying, "People forget that a lot of fringe stories routinely had disinformation and were marketed to be unbelievable by our own government for so long for a variety of purposes. So over the decades people became conditioned to think these stories are not real even when some of them were." Asked if there was one mystery he would like to solve, DeLonge replied, "There's one riddle I'd love to solve - about ancient man on this planet and the capabilities we had. Like, the fact that we may have been to the moon or mars long ago . . . Did we go there a million years ago and are we just rediscovering it all now? I don't think we're working with little green aliens in a mountain, but I do think there's a lot of stuff in our solar system that's pretty trippy." DeLonge has been doing shows with Angels & Airwaves in support of that band's fourth album, Love Part Two. The band produced an 85-minute science fiction film called Love in conjunction with the album that screened at several festivals and one-night events. Blink-182 issued its first collection of all-new music since 2003, called Neighborhoods, last September.

California act Young The Giant's self-titled 2011 debut may capture the sound of four teenage musicians living and recording in Southern California, but singer Sameer Gadhia told Reuters that the band is aiming for something darker on its next effort. He explained, "We were 18 or 19 years old when we wrote (the first album). Now we've experienced a lot together, we've grown together as individuals, musicians and as a group, we don't feel like that was the best we could have done. . . . We've experienced a lot, we've traveled so much. I think there will be a little bit darker songs on (the second album), but we're not trying to completely betray what we do naturally together." Young The Giant's debut features the hits "My Body" and "Cough Syrup." While many critics have been kind to the band, some have not been so favorable. Pitchfork.com called the group's debut "corporate indie," while England's Observer described the band as "an anemic Coldplay." Young The Giant will begin its first headlining tour of North America on February 8th in San Francisco, ending two months later on April 7th in Seattle.