The Dutchess and the Duke, a Seattle duo whose sound people like comparing to the very early Rolling Stones, had barely played live when Sub Pop's boutique label Hardly Art offered them a record deal. In the 18 months since their debut She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke, Kimberly Morrison and Jesse Lortz have toured extensively (with fellow Seattle band Fleet Foxes, among others) and, in October, released a second album, Sunset/Sunrise. The record's lyrics, written by Lortz, deal with one-sided relationships, personal demons and, in at least one case, fatherhood. ("All of the songs are autobiographical," says Lortz.) These are smoldering, after-dark songs, songs that build to gloomy-yet-somehow-uplifting guy-girl choruses.

The Dutchess and the Duke plays Union Hall in Brooklyn tonight and Mercury Lounge on Friday. When we spoke with Lortz last month the band was headed from Birmingham, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia in a Dodge Sprinter that Lortz seemed to be enjoying. "It's roomy," he said. "You can stand up in it!"

Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard

As a member of Uncle Tupelo, a solo artist, and now, in his second go as the leader of Son Volt, Jay Farrar has written hundreds of songs--and in terms of inspiration and the creative process, he's found that cultivating a bit of eccentricity can result in great music. As he put it recently, "The more idiosyncratic the better."

"Idiosyncratic" would be one way to describe Farrar's latest project: an album of songs based on a 47-year-old book. Farrar and Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard have just released One Fast Move Or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, a dozen songs based on one of Jack Kerouac's darker works. The music serves as the soundtrack to director Curt Worden's documentary of the same title, and it's exactly what you'd expect from two of the more interesting songwriters working today: a collection of mournful, low-key songs that evoke the time and place of the beat writer's spiritual quest.

Farrar and Gibbard are currently on a mini-tour--four cities--and they'll finish up tonight at Webster Hall. We recently spoke with Farrar from his St. Louis home about his admiration for Kerouac, how the novelist inspired him as a songwriter, and the "surprises" that he's expected to deliver tonight in New York.

"Sorry to use the word 'peppy.'"

The website for Merge Records says that Bay of Pigs, the new EP from Daniel Bejar's Destroyer which came out on Tuesday, "is an account of the 1961 American invasion of Cuba." That's sort of true--there was a second or two during the songwriting process when an image of a young Jackie Kennedy passed through Bejar's head--but the song's not really a piece of historical reportage. One of the more ambitious bits of popular music released this year, Bay of Pigs is less concerned with Oval Office folly than sketches of several mysterious women, one of whom is described this way: "Her heart's made of wood/As apocalypses go that's pretty good." The song also talks about "a crumbling beauty trapped in a river of ice" and "a ransom note written on the night sky above (that) reminds me what, in particular, about this wine I love." These poetic lyrics are backed with what he calls an "ambient disco" mix of spare, ethereal synths.

Speaking from his home in Vancouver, Bejar talked about songwriting, playing music that has little to do with rock and roll, and his future with the New Pornographers.

"Mickey Rourke and I don't punch each other physically, but we do punch each other in other ways--it's emotional."

Sam Rockwell is an actor who's both comfortable propping up bigger stars--he was a supporting player alongside Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford--and, as he did playing the delusional game show host Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, carrying scenes through a blend of empathy, humor and manic energy. But never before has he had to bear a load like he does in Moon, a heavily conceptual sci-fi drama that opens this Friday. In the second feature from director Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son), Rockwell, 40, performs admirably in what often feels like a one-man theater production. Accompanied on a moon station by only a chatty but deceptive computer named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey and modeled on Hal from Kubrick's 2001), Rockwell's Sam Bell is an employee of an American corporation that's figured out how to harvest lunar energy. Aside from his brief conversations with Gerty and some Earth-bound crewmates, Rockwell's character is alone in virtually every scene--that is, until his clone shows up, calling into question everything from Bell's occupation to his identity.

Speaking by phone recently from outside Los Angeles, Rockwell talked about the challenges of performing opposite inanimate objects, the influence of a World War II drama starring the elder Bowie, and facing off against Mickey Rourke in his current project, Iron Man 2.

"Jim Carroll goes to a colonic spa in San Francisco with a friend of his, and his friend shits out this plastic green army soldier... his friend, after the soldier was out of his system, he got a lot mellower."

Davy's Sears-style portrait

Eight years into a project that began when he discovered a note meant for someone else--"You're a fucking LIAR," it read..."PS Page me later"--Davy Rothbart is as enthusiastic as ever about his latest finds. About once a year he publishes Found Magazine, each issue a collection of strange, moving and often absurd pieces of ephemera (letters, old photos, lists) discovered by complete strangers. His third and latest Found book--Requiem For A Paper Bag: Celebrities & Civilians Tell Stories of the Best Lost, Tossed & Found Items From Around the World, out this week on Fireside--includes entries from the lit world (Jonathan Lethem, Charles Baxter), movies (Seth Rogen), music (Chuck D, Henry Rollins) and TV (Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live). These celebrity contributions range from material objects to the intangible, from Devendra Banhart's discovery of a photo of a woman "wearing only makeup and a slew of gangsta tattoos" to how Damon Wayans "found comedy: my career, my best friend."

Rothbart brings the most recent Found tour to New York this week with stops in Brooklyn, at the Bell House tonight, and Manhattan, a fundraiser for the Institute for Collaborative Education this Friday, May 8. He plans to amuse with readings from Found publications, and he'll get a hand from his brother Peter who will perform songs inspired by Found's greatest finds.