Death Cab for Cutie arrive to the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards
Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

NEW YORK — The spirit and energy of the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards — the madcap awards show that celebrates independent music and college radio across the country — was distilled entirely in the show's opening performance.

Once the lights dimmed at Roseland Ballroom, house DJ Diplo cranked out booty-shaking jams while the giant video screens showed Brooklyn new-wave duo Matt and Kim riding through the city on bicycles. Once they arrived, they stormed the stage and kicked into "Lessons Learned." Flanked by eight backup singers who gradually stripped down to their underwear (in a nod to the Video Music Award-winning video for the same song), the duo jubilantly pounded out the song. Unlike this year's VMAs, stage crashers were welcomed during Matt and Kim's three minutes of joy, and Kim herself mounted the crowd at the end.

	Woodie Awards Show Highlights

From there, Pete Wentz — dressed casually and holding a red plastic cup (a common accessory throughout the evening) — sauntered onstage and officially kicked off the show, which airs December 4 at 10 p.m. on MTV, MTV2 and mtvU. What followed was a cavalcade of fun-loving guest appearances, energy-packed performances and plenty of enthusiastic crowd interaction.

Zooey Deschanel appeared next, running off a long and complicated story about cloning herself to find out about more bands and presenting the Breaking Woodie award to Never Shout Never. 3OH!3 turned plenty of heads when they appeared dressed in the same red-lace costume Lady Gaga wore to the VMAs, then handed the Left Field Woodie to a grateful Tech N9ne. Other winners included Hotel of the Laughing Tree (the Long Island quintet who picked up the Best Music on Campus Woodie and seemed overwhelmed by the whole fiasco), Green Day (who were absent, forcing Asher Roth to accept in their honor — which he did by leaping into the crowd while wearing a throwback basketball jersey) and Matt and Kim (who won the Best Video Woodie for "Lessons Learned").

On the performance front, nobody could quite match the manic grandeur of Matt and Kim, but Passion Pit (who whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a ridiculous rendition of "The Reeling") and the Clipse, (who brought out Cam'ron and Rick Ross for a chaotic but thrilling run through a handful of lightning-tongue verses) came pretty close. With all the flailing limbs and semi-nude people, it was easy to miss the easy poise of Death Cab for Cutie, who rolled through their "New Moon" soundtrack song, "Meet Me on the Equinox," with an arena-rock grace, clearly cementing themselves as not only the night's elder statesmen, but also the band ready for much bigger rooms than Roseland.

By the end of the evening, the crowd was soaked with sweat but still swaying and dancing and drinking. Like the best college party, it hardly mattered who won in the end (that would be Kings of Leon, who scored the night's top honor of Woodie of the Year).

Don't miss the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards, airing on December 4 at 10 p.m. on MTV, MTV2 and mtvU!

• Woodie Awards 2009: Show Highlights
• Woodie Awards 2009: Red Carpet

• Kings Of Leon
• Death Cab For Cutie
• Passion Pit
• Matt and Kim

Nathan Followill of Kings Of Leon
Photo: Stephen Lovekin/ Getty Images

Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill married girlfriend singer/songwriter Jessie Baylin over the weekend. UsMagazine.com reported that Followill, 30, and Baylin, 25, married on Saturday evening at Wolf Den Farm in Brentwood, Tennessee, in a small ceremony that included close friends and family, as well as actress Scarlett Johansson, a high school friend of Baylin's.

"The wedding was beautiful. It was a gorgeous, 70-degree day," an unnamed band rep told Us of the ceremony, which took place in a rustic barn. Baylin, who was born in New Jersey but lives in Nashville, has released two albums of rootsy music, including last year's Firesight. The couple first met at the Bonnaroo festival in 2006.

Followill, 30, tweeted about his wedding on Sunday morning, according to People.com. "I woke up with a married woman in my bed this morning," he wrote. "Luckily she was mine."

The wedding caps a stellar year for the Kings, who have long been popular overseas, but had struggled to build a large U.S. audience until recently. In addition to a smash headlining tour of amphitheaters, the Kings snagged a Grammy award for their breakthrough hit single, "Sex on Fire," from their most successful album to date, Only By the Night, which has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide.

After years of being notorious hell-raisers on the road, Nathan is the first of the Followills — the band is led by middle brother, guitarist/singer Caleb, and features youngest brother Jared on bass and cousin Matthew on lead guitar — to wed. The Kings recently released a live DVD and have talked about releasing a remix album featuring the deft touches of Justin Timberlake, Linkin Park and Pharrell.

• This Week's Biggest News

• Kings Of Leon
• Jessie Baylin

Kid Cudi
Photo: MTV News

Kid Cudi went from mixtape phenom to the upper echelons of the Billboard albums chart in little over a year, so it's no surprise he wants to keep the ball rolling. What is a surprise is who he wants to keep it rolling with.

We already know he's hard at work on projects with rapper Chip Tha Ripper and Brooklyn electro duo Ratatat, but backstage at this past weekend's Ulalume Music Festival in Columbia, Maryland, he revealed details of another album, a compilation disc he's dubbed Cudder. And he's aiming extra high on this one.

"Cudder is basically an album of me working with artists that have inspired me or artists that have helped me grow and people who I've always admired," Cudi said. "So far, we've got Snoop, Travis Barker — trying to get Green Day onboard, hopefully, Kings of Leon, hopefully. I'm really trying to do all the collabs that I couldn't do for the [Man on the Moon] album, and then some, because the album was so themed that I had to strip a lot of features. We're going to have the Clipse on this compilation, Robin Thicke, hopefully we're going to get in the studio, I just did a record for his upcoming album; it's amazing."

Cudi said he's aiming to have Cudder out by "summertime at the latest," and while the idea of him working with, say, Billie Joe Armstrong might seem a bit odd, he points to Moon tracks like "Pursuit of Happiness" (his collaboration with Ratatat and MGMT) as proof that he can pull it off and as a possible preview of how the song might turn out.

"On the Ratatat song, you can hear Ratatat and you can hear me; we don't compromise each other. That's the same thing I want to do with anybody I work with. ... I don't want it to be, like, a Green Day song with me rapping over it," he said. "What I want to do is, have the triangle effect. Have Green Day involved and have them co-produce with someone like a Ratatat or my producers, do like a joint thing, and then we all create from the ground up. That way, it's like a fusion of each sound and each inspiration."

• MTV News Extended Play: Ulalume Edition

• MTV.com Exclusive: Kid Cudi

• Kid Cudi
• Green Day
• Kings Of Leon

Drake performs at the 2009 BET Awards
Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Hotly tipped Canadian MCs? Check. Hard-charging Southern-rock royalty? Yep. Animal Collective? You bet. The nominations for the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards are in, and, well, let's just say it's a pretty diverse field.

Chosen by college students and music fans across the country, the noms for the sixth-annual Woodies span the spectrum, with big-name acts like Drake and the Kings of Leon going head-to-head with lesser-known bands like La Roux, Grizzly Bear and, yes, even Animal Collective for the coveted big hunk of wood.

Drake and KOL face off against Asher Roth, MGMT and the Silversun Pickups for the night's biggest award — Woodie of the Year — given to the artist who made the biggest splash on mtvU and the college music scene over the past year. Grizzly Bear and La Roux are both up for the Breaking Woodie (given to the year's best emerging artist), along with Wale, Friendly Fires, Passion Pit and Never Shout Never. Animal Collective will battle Green Day, Phoenix, 3OH!3 and POS in the Performing Woodie category, given to the year's best live act.

Needless to say, this ain't the Grammys.

The 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards will be held November 18 at New York's Roseland Ballroom, with performances and appearances to be announced shortly (in previous years, Beck, Death Cab for Cutie, All Time Low and Santigold — to name just a few — have taken the stage). The show will then premiere Friday, December 4, at 10 p.m. ET on mtvU, MTV, MTV2 and Palladia.

Voting in all categories begins Monday (October 5) at Woodies.MTV.com and runs through November 16.

The nominees for the 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards are:

Woodie of the Year
Asher Roth
Kings of Leon
Drake
MGMT
Silversun Pickups

The Breaking Woodie
Grizzly Bear
Never Shout Never
Wale
La Roux
Friendly Fires
Passion Pit

Left Field Woodie
Amanda Blank
Janelle Monáe
Major Lazer
Jay Reatard
Tech N9ne

Best Video Woodie
Matt & Kim, "Lessons Learned"
Dead Weather, "Treat Me Like Your Mother"
Death Cab for Cutie, "Grapevine Fires"
Anjulie, "Boom"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Heads Will Roll"
Kid Cudi, "Day N Nite"

Performing Woodie
Green Day
Phoenix
3OH!3
Animal Collective
POS

The Good Woodie (Given to the artist with the greatest social impact)
John Legend, Show Me Campaign
Wyclef Jean, Yele Haiti
Kenna, PlayPumps
Jamie Tworkowski, To Write Love on Her Arms
Ra Ra Riot, John Ryan Pike Memorial Foundation
Alicia Keys, Keep a Child Alive/ AIDS activism

• The 2009 mtvU Woodie Awards Are Coming December 4th!

• Woodie Awards 2009 Nominees

• Kings Of Leon
• Kid Cudi
• Drake

Jay-Z's <i>The Blueprint 3</i>
Photo: Roc-A-Fella

Jay-Z has passed the King. With one of the biggest debut weeks of the year, Jigga's The Blueprint 3, the rapper's 11th #1 album on the Billboard 200, pushed him past Elvis Presley as the solo act with the most #1 albums in the chart's history. Jay did it by selling more than 476,000 copies of the disc according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan.

In the same week, the Beatles — the only act with more #1 albums at 19 — also storm back onto the charts with the reissuing of their remastered catalog. Though most Beatles albums are not eligible for the top 200 chart, which includes only releases from the past 18 months, a newly configured stereo box set lands at #15 on sales of 26,000 and the mono box set, Beatles in Mono, comes in at #40 on sales of 12,000. In total, Billboard reported that the Beatles catalog sold more than 626,000 copies, including the new reissues and older versions, a week after the catalog had moved a more modest 21,000 copies. The one-week total nearly equaled the year-to-date sales for the Beatles catalog (635,000).

The Beatles rule the Pop Catalog chart, with nine of the top 10 albums and 16 of the top 20. The biggest seller in the reissue series was 1969's Abbey Road (89,000), followed by the iconic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (74,000), The Beatles (60,000), Rubber Soul (58,000), Revolver (46,000) and Help! (#7, 39,000).

Back on the 200 charts, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon notches a #4 debut for Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II (68,000), country duo Brooks and Dunn hit #5 with #1s ... and Then Some (55,000), and Boys Like Girls have the other top 10 debut at #8 with Love Drunk (41,000). The rest of the top 10 are: Miley Cyrus' Time of Our Lives EP (#2, 120,000), Whitney Houston's I Look To You (#3, 88,000, down 71 percent), Trey Songz' Ready (#6, 45,000), Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies) (#7, 44,000), Kings of Leon's Only by the Night (#9, 40,000) and VMA bum-rush victim Taylor Swift's Fearless (#10, 33,000).

Reunited jam-band godheads Phish finish at #13 in the chart debut of their comeback album, Joy (29,000). Pitbull takes a hard dive in week two for his  Rebelution, dropping 16 spots to #24 (18,000, down 57 percent), followed by Chevelle, who fall 20 spots to #26 (16,000, down 65 percent) and Insane Clown Posse, who slip 39 spots in the second week for Bang! Pow! Boom! (12,000, down 77 percent).

The collector's edition of Jay-Z's Blueprint comes in at #30 (14,000). Indie faves Yo La Tengo slip in at #58 with Popular Songs (9,000), and They Might Be Giants hit #91 with their latest collection of kids' songs, Here Comes Science (6,000).

Next week, look out for the EP from Drake, as well as chart debuts from Muse and Kid Cudi.