Los Angeles-based artist Robert Fleming has a new full-length album out under the name of his latest project Victory, and one track from Victory is Music has been getting serious airplay in a new Cadillac commercial.

The spot is titled “Headphones” and features a teen boy listening to Victory’s “Bad Man” on his headphones as he jumps into his father’s new car.  The boy is asked to take off his headphones, but doesn’t miss a beat of his music with the Cadillac XTS’ ability to sync playlists from mobile devices.

The entire album – much of which was recorded with Fleming’s Gretsch G6117T-HT Anniversary – features a retro vibe and gritty rock and roll foundation.

Check out Victory’s “Headphones” commercial below and visit his official website for more information.

With support from a Kickstarter campaign, Gretsch guitarist Steve Hunter released his fifth studio solo album, The Manhattan Blues Project, on April 30.

After recording and touring with Alice Cooper in 2011, Hunter decided to get off the road to write and record this latest effort, which is an ode to his love of the Blues and New York City.

“Most albums that I hear in regards to New York are generally jazzy, which is cool,” said Hunter. “But I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something in a bluesy way because I kind of saw the more soulful part of Manhattan, and I wanted to bring that to this album.  Each of the songs that I’ve written are about some piece of Manhattan that I’ve looked at in kind of a different way.”

The album also features two instrumental covers. The first is “What’s Going On” by one of Hunter’s favorite artists Marvin Gaye. He also does an instrumental version of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” a song he had played the guitars on for the original album version in 1977.

Hunter, whose other tour and album credits include working with Lou Reed, Tracy Chapman, David Lee Rother, Julian Lennon, Aerosmith and Glen Campbell, had several artists willing to guest on this latest effort.

Joe Satriani and Marty Friedman lent solos to “Twilight in Harlem,” while Johnny Depp and Joe Perry teamed up on “The Brooklyn Shuffle.”

“I told Johnny and Joe to plug their guitars in and have a blast, and it sounds like they did to me,” shared Hunter.

Other artists who contributed to the album include Tony Levin, Michael Lee Firkins, Phil Aaberg, 2Cellos and Tommy Henriksen.

Order the album here.

The tracklisting for The Manhattan Blues Project is as follows:
Prelude to the Blues
What’s Going On
222 W 23^rd
Gramercy Park
Solsbury Hill
Ground Zero
A Night at the Waldorf
Twilight in Harlem
Daydream by the Hudson
Flames at the Dakota
The Brooklyn Shuffle
Sunset in Central Park

The quartet played their latest single “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up),” with singer Patrick Stump clutching a white version of his signature Gretsch Stump-O-Matic Electromatic CVT guitars.

Watch the guys do their thing at the end of the full episode after the jump and visit Fall Out Boy’s official website for more information.

In addition, the Portland, Ore., based band pulled out “People Say,” one of the hits off their 2009 album The Satanic Satanist.

Check out both clips below and visit Portugal. The Man’s official website for more information.

Photos by Torey Mundkowsky

Guitarist/keyboardist Ted Sablay has known the guys in Las Vegas arena rockers the Killers for a few years, having joined them as a touring musician in support of 2006’s Sam’s Town.

Now, as the Killers embark on their North American tour on behalf of their supremely powerful Battle Born, Sablay can still be seen on stage with the Killers playing keys and his (left-handed) guitars.

The Killers’ tour recently ran through Tucson, Ariz., where they appeared at KMFA Day at Kino Stadium with Cake and Bad Religion.

With frontman Brandon Flowers holding the rabid crowd in the palm of his hand, Sablay added depth to the lush anthems the Killers have created over their accomplished career.

The band opened with one of their first hits, “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” from their 2004 debut Hot Fuss.  Driven by Mark Stroermer’s punchy bassline, the party atmosphere was established early.

Since the festival schedule required an abbreviated setlist, the Killers ran through the bigger numbers, going into the chart-busting “Mr. Brightside” directly after “Jenny.”

Flowers then removed his jacket and advised the audience that they were “gonna pick it up a little bit.”

“Are you ready?” he asked.  When the response wasn’t quite up to par, he repeated, “Are you ready or not?”

Satisfied with that audience reaction, he fired off the jaunty “Spaceman,” following that with fan favorites such as “Smile Like You Mean It,” “Human,” “Somebody Told Me,” “For Reasons Unknown” and “Read My Mind.”

The Killers channeled the Smiths with “Smile Like You Mean It,” and the entire venue was turned into a dance party with the sonic synth assault of “Human.”

Dozens of fans crowd-surfed their way towards the stage throughout the set, but coincidentally during this Day & Age hit number, one ardent watcher seemed hell-bent on proving he was superhuman. After making it into the safety of the photo pit area, he attempted to climb his way onstage. It took about 10 security guards to finally slow his roll.

The band also slowed theirs – just slightly.

“The motto where we are from is what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” Flowers said with a laugh. “This next song starts out there in our desert and is about our parents and what that represents.”

With that, a few twinkling notes from a piano cued the start of the slow-building “A Dustland Fairytale,” also off Day & Age.

Flowers, backed only by Dave Keuning on guitar, then paid tribute to the locals by segueing into a brief cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”

“Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn’t last,” said Flowers. “Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona for some California grass.”

Battle Born was certainly represented, as well.  The soaring “Miss Atomic Bomb” and “From Here on Out” were highlights, and their latest single “Runaways” was punched up by confetti cannons and its bombastic chorus.

As the show came to a close, Flowers had a message for the fans.

“We’ve only got one more so we’re going to play it as hard as we can,” he noted before a finale of “When You Were Young.”

While the Killers might have a different setlist that stays more true to the fresh Battle Born on their other headlining dates, it’s safe to say that nobody at the Tucson show had a problem with the expanded band’s reliance on their hits for that one night.

For more information, visit Sablay’s official website here and the home of the Killers here.

Perhaps that was because of their excellent opener of ”Sleep Alone,” which was the first single off their 2012 album Beacon.

Check out Two Door Cinema Club playing “Sleep Alone” in the clip after the jump and visit their official website for more information.

Mason came into 2013 on a roll, too, with the December 2012 release of his third album Carry On.

Mason recently stopped by the Gretsch Showroom in London to perform a few songs from that record, and his distinctive voice lends itself well to accompaniment from his Gretsch Electromatic guitar.

Watch Mason perform ”Into Tomorrow” and “I Got Gold” in the videos below and visit his official website for more information.

Binder, who was recently nominated for a 2013 Daytime Emmy Award for Best Original Song for a Drama Series with her co-writing credit for “Just Like That” on General Hospital, pulled out the hopeful tune “Nashville” for her CBS appearance.

Check out her performance here and don’t miss the accompanying resonator from the Gretsch Roots Collection.

For more information, visit Binder’s official website.

Earlier this year, Skinny Jim & the Number 9 Blacktops released their latest effort, Cool on My Right.  Supersuckers frontman Eddie Spaghetti produced the album, which was recorded at Proletarian Studios in Indianapolis over an eight-day period.

“I wanted the album to have a raunchy rock feel,” said Skinny Jim frontman Jim Rotramel. “I wrote songs about monster trucks, strip clubs and the state of Kentucky. I also wanted rougher guitar tones than most of my older stuff. The album is definitely more rock ‘n’ roll than any of our previous material.”

In sticking with tradition, the album is named after one of the song’s lyrics. “Cool on my Right” is referenced in the album’s track, “Frankfort Avenue.”

“It’s about Sean Hopkins from the band Dallas Alice,” said Rotramel. “Sean has ‘Cool  Hand’ tattooed on his knuckles, and the song’s lyrics go ‘Driving straight on through the night, hand on my left, cool on my right.’”

Rotramel revealed that most of the songs came together over those eight, surprisingly stress-free days at the Ken Avery-owned studio.

“Whoever wasn’t tracking at the time was upstairs writing, grilling out, or just hanging out on the couch,” said Rotramel. “The recording process is never really smooth but this one went pretty quick, with not too many stressful moments. I’m horrible about not finishing any songs before I go into the studio. Some songs we didn’t even know, and I think I only had one or two solos written when I went in. I left a lot of the songs open, in hopes that Eddie would help with what direction he thought they should go. He nailed it 110 percent!”

Spaghetti also sang backup vocals on a few of the tracks, which can be previewed or ordered on iTunes.

Front and center was a eye-catching Gretsch Silver Jet.

“I saw that – what I like to refer to as the ‘Disco Jet,’ but its [proper name is] the Silver Jet,” he told the magazine.  ”I saw that one and it was massively offensive and really cool looking.  I brought it out, actually, to Alpine Valley when I played wiht Pearl Jam, and I remember walking down to go and play.  We were playing ‘State of Love and Trust.’  I got to go and join them.  Very cool.  I was very, very happy with that.  And [Mike] McCready comes out and he’s got the gold – slightly gold – original version of it.  And he’s like, ‘Aah!  We can’t both go onstage with the Silver Jets!’”

Thenewno2 recently made a splash with their score for the 2013 movie Beautiful Creatures, and the band released the critically-acclaimed thefearofmissingout last year.

To learn more about what Harrison used to make those albums, check out the video below and visit thenewno2′s official website.