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As the weather turns my thoughts turn to music. To be fair, my thoughts normally turn to music and I love having my seasons defined by records. While Teenage Fanclub, Todd Fancey and Bart Davenport saw me through the magical summer, a few talents have returned to entrance me as the leaves begin to fall.

Flower Booking (booking agent for bands like Interpol, Mark Gardener, Mary Timony, Tortoise and more) is running a charity auction to benefit P.L.A.Y.. P.L.A.Y. donates toys, games and more to needy Children's hospitals across the country. Among the items being auctioned off by Flower are wristbands for next year's SxSW festival, writing a setlist for Local H, a recording session with Ted Leo, a Rickenbacker from Q and not U, having one of your songs remixed by Radio 4, learn Bio from Kenny of American Analog Set. While many of the items are Chicago specific as Flower is located there, not all are. Please go check out their donations information.

Well, it's not like news of BABYSHAMBLES frontman Pete Doherty being arrested is actually "news" anymore, since it's pretty commonplace these days. But what's actually news is the fact that it appears they didn't catch him with anything. Perhaps as a direct response of the widely circulated photos of Doherty and gal pal Kate Moss snorting coke, the Babyshambles tour bus was stopped after their gig on Saturday night and raided by UK anti-drug squads. The band was taken into custody, but already the word is that the police came up virtually empty-handed. Doherty, leaving the police station, told reporters that the police had confused his heroin withdrawal implant as the real thing. Ah well, maybe next time, eh, Pete?

Unfortunately for organizers of the Austin City Limits Festival this weekend their normally ideal setting of Austin is about to be battered by Hurricane Rita. As of now, the show will go on since the city should not be seeing the worst of the storm. Organizers have lined up three days of music that includes bands like Oasis, Franz Ferdinand, Coldplay, Keane, Doves, Ambulance Ltd, Bravery, Mates of State, Walkmen, and many MANY more. As of now only seven bands have cancelled their appearances (among them The Ditty Bops and Nine Black Alps). If you were planning on attending the festivities be sure to dress appropriately for a brief torrent of rain and wind. In case things go pear shaped in Austin keep an eye on the ACL website for futher updates.

As we've reported earlier, today is the release date for the ONLINE version of the new War Child benefit compilation, "Help: A Day in the Life." Featuring tracks from all sorts of fantastic artists recorded over the past 24 hours, the compilation goes on sale today at warchildmusic.com. The disc will be in stores in about a month, but the tracks were supposed to go online at UK midday today (though, as of this writing, traffic has all but shut down the site and the tracks have yet to appear.) What we DO know, though, is that Coldplay and Babyshambles have both added last minute tracks, on top of the stellar lineup already participating (Belle & Sebastian, Bloc Party, Keane, Kaiser Chiefs, Manic Street Preachers, etc.) Go help a worthy cause and download it today!

England's Trembling Blue Stars are about to call it quits. They have no more plans to remain together as a band after the first of the year. As such they are in the process of planning a few goodbye gigs including a small stop over in the US for the east coast....

Ten years after the initial CD release from War Child, Britian's new elite musicians are headed back into the studio to make a new record. Help: A Day In The Life commemorates the anniversary of the project that set the bar for how charity records could help. On September 9, 1995 War Child Music put a fantastic effort into the world to benefit children caught up in a war torn Yugoslavia. Their record featured bands like Oasis, Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers, Blur, The Charlatans, The Boo Radleys, Massive Attack, Portishead, Suede, The Chemical Brothers and more. As War Child did 10 years ago, the entire new record will be recorded and mixed in one day... and released again on September 9. So who will be featured on this new disc? The lineup isn't complete yet but so far War Child has thrown us a few bones with Radiohead, Gorillaz, Razorlight, Bloc Party, Hard-Fi, The Coral, Elbow, Maximo Park, The Zutons, Manic Street Preachers, Maximo Park, Mylo and The Magic Numbers. While the original disc benefited kids in Yugoslavia, the new CD will be expanding their goals to reach out to children in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Los Angeles based KROQ has announced the lineup for their annual Inland Invasion concert. The concert is set to take place on September 17 and is featuring such exciting names as Beck, Bloc Party, The Bravery, Cake, Garbage, Jet, Madness, Oasis, Weezer and the darling of indie summer fests... Arcade Fire. Amazingly all of this will take place in ONE day. You can win tickets at KROQ's website or they will go on sale on Saturday, August 20 at noon.

As a treat to their fans The Clientele have snuck a sound feed of their new single "Since K Got Over Me" up on their myspace profile. The single won't hit the UK shelves until August 22 but you can hear it now through Real Audio. This is the first release for the band in almost two years and is a mark of good things to come with their new album release Strange Geometry (out in the UK 5 Sept on Pointy, out in the US 11 Oct on Merge).

"I'm literally about to go to the studio and finish off my solo album. I kind of half finished it a year ago and I've been living with it and we're just putting a few final touches to it. It should be released next year and I'm very proud of it."

In an exclusive to Xfm Brett Anderson (formerly of Suede, now of The Tears) announces the imminent completion of his first solo record. He claims in the interview that the difference between his material and The Tears is a lack of guitars... but then goes on to admit there are actually guitars on the record and oh by the way they're all played by him. Yeh it's all about as confusing as this statement... "I co-wrote all the songs with a guy called Fred Bull who was in a band called Pleasure. He's a mate and we started writing together and it went really well so we just made the record." Co-wrote? How does one co-write a solo project?