Weezer's Rivers Cuomo
Photo: MTV News

There's no mistaking a Weezer song: the faux-metal riffs, big hooks, infectious choruses and Rivers Cuomo's sweet, slightly nasal croon. Cuomo has spent a career crafting these quirky pop songs that leap across genre boundaries, which is why it makes perfect sense that he would collaborate with "American Idol" runner-up and erstwhile glam rocker Adam Lambert. Cuomo wrote a song for Lambert for his upcoming debut album, For Your Entertainment.

"I wrote a song called 'Pick U Up' for Weezer. It's one of my favorite songs I ever wrote. For some reason, Weezer didn't want to record it for Raditude," Cuomo told MTV News, referencing his band's new album, which hit stores Tuesday (November 3). "I figured it would end up on the next record and it just didn't fit this time around. Then I was invited to sit in with Adam Lambert and watch him sing, and he was checking out the song. And as it turns out, he came up with a few ideas for it for himself, changed the melody around, suggested some lyric changes and before you knew it, I was writing a song with Adam Lambert."

Cuomo said "Pick U Up" draws from a fantastically eclectic combination of sounds. "It sounds like a combination of ABBA, with beautiful pop melodies, and a disco beat like you'd hear in a Donna Summer song," he said. "But then there is this heavy guitar feel to it, like from [German techno-metal band] Rammstein or something. It's just a wonderful hybrid of all the music I love."

Cuomo clearly enjoyed his time with Lambert and was phenomenally impressed with his instrument. "He has the most amazing voice. It's exactly the kind of voice I convince myself I have on my best day, but of course I'm nowhere near that amazing," he said.

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Weezer's Rivers Cuomo performs in New York on October 31, 2009
Photo: Ben Hider/ Getty Images

On Saturday night, Weezer celebrated Halloween with a concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. It was your typical Weezer show, full of big hooks and lung-busting sing-alongs, but when it came time for the group to play new single "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To," they welcomed a special guest onstage: "Gossip Girl" star and "Good Girls Go Bad" singer Leighton Meester.

She stormed the stage and duetted with Cuomo on the song, which sounded extremely polished but was mostly off-the-cuff.

"We invited her down, and she was in rehearsal — wait, did she even come to rehearsal? No, she didn't!" Cuomo told MTV News, trying to recollect how the events shook out. "We just worked on it in the dressing room right before the show. 'You sing this line, now I'll sing that line,' just like that. It's best when there's a little rehearsal, so that it can still feel spontaneous."

For most of their 15-year existence, Weezer have pretty much kept to themselves, rarely going outside of their immediate universe. But that has all changed with Raditude, the band's sixth album, which drops Tuesday. The spirit of collaboration has led to a guest spot from Lil Wayne on the song "Can't Stop Partying," and Cuomo has recently spent time with Adam Lambert and Katy Perry on music. He credits a tiny tour that brought them closer to the fans.

"We did a tiny tour called the Hootenanny Tour," he explained. "We invited fans to show up with instruments, and we had to figure out how to jam with these people we've never met with instruments I had never seen before. It was really challenging and exciting."

So exciting, in fact, that Weezer repeated the feat on Monday's (November 2) episode of "It's On With Alexa Chung," which featured yet another duet between Cuomo and Meester on "I Want You To."

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Weezer's Rivers Cuomo
Photo: MTV News

As if you didn't already have enough good reasons to watch Weezer's brand-new "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" video — The spooky doppelgängers! The wanton violence! The girl who was in "Kindergarten Cop"! — well, we've got another one for you: Hot Weezer-on-Weezer reproduction.

That's right, "I Want You To" features the guys in Weezer makin' babies, presumably with each other, since the video is set in a town — called Weezerville — where every man, woman and child is a member of the band. Confused? Turned on? Both? Here's director Marc Webb to explain.

"The idea of the video is really simple: It's a town that's made up of clones of Weezer. There are multiple versions of Brian and Patrick and Scott and Rivers," Webb told MTV News last month on the set of the video in Piru, California. "We shot with a bunch of little kids too [because] we're going to replace their heads with the band members of Weezer. They're going to be the little versions of them, because the spawn here all look like their parents. I don't know how they reproduce. ... That'll be for the sequel. They just split in half. It's amazing."

OK, so it's not exactly Slash Fiction, but it's close. But speaking of slash, there is plenty of bloodshed — not to mention the occasional vehicular assault — in "I Want You To," and, once again, it's the guys in Weezer who are doing it all ... for love.

"We're all in Weezerville, doing our daily routines, then one day, this beautiful young woman comes out of nowhere, enters Weezerville, heads start turning, accidents start happening," frontman Rivers Cuomo explained. "Scott Shriner gets hit by an arrow, Pat Wilson gets run over by a car — I happen to be behind the wheel — Brian Bell gets his arm chopped off by a chainsaw, because we're all flustered when we see this girl, we lose our focus, our concentration. ... Next thing you know, accidents start happening."

And the cause of all that chaos? Actress Odette Yustman, who filled MTV News in on just what happens at the conclusion of the clip. And here's a hint: There's even more violence involved.

"I'm the femme fatale of the video. I come in and I disturb the peace and distract everybody," she said. "Towards the end, they realize I'm not the nice girl I seem to be, so they kick me out of town. And I have to leave. Forcefully."

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Photo: John Parra/ WireImage

Rivers Cuomo is busy these days promoting Weezer's upcoming album, Raditude (out in November), but he's also managing to make some time to hit the studio to work on some new music with a certain pop star who has a penchant for strawberries.

In an interview with Buzznet.com on October 14, the Weezer frontman spilled the beans about hitting the studio with Katy Perry. "We're writing together next week," he revealed. "Can't wait."

And on Tuesday, Perry took to her Twitter to announce that she was heading into the studio to work on music for an upcoming album, her follow-up to her hit-spawning "One of the Boys." "MORNIN'! TODAY'S the 1ST day back in the studio! I have lots of layers to get through, thankfully @greg_wells is there to do the peeling ... " she wrote about working with the guy who produced Perry's hits "Waking Up in Vegas" and "Ur So Gay."

Recently Perry spoke to MTV News about the vibe she'd like to have for the new record. She hoped that her new music would up the fun factor of her last album. "I'm kind of thinking I want to do my record like a mesh between 'Lovefool' by the Cardigans and ['The Sign'] by Ace of Base," she explained. "I want to make songs that people want to hold hands and roller-skate to."

But she also said that she didn't want to produce One of the Boys 2.0. "I'm not looking to alienate my fans, but I can't be that grown-up Shirley Temple girl wearing the stupid strawberry in her hair all the time ... because I'd kill myself or someone else would for me," Perry explained. "So I'm really excited to always be evolving and changing — with my look, with my music, it keeps me entertained as well."

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Rivers Cuomo on the "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" video set
Photo: MTV News

Over the years, the town of Piru, California, has stood in for countless frontier towns — Hazzard County, Georgia, and Bon Temps, Louisiana (a.k.a. the hunting grounds of Sookie Stackhouse's vampire friends on "True Blood"), for example — in movies and TV shows, but it's never been transformed into anything quite like this.

Earlier this week, Weezer and director Marc Webb, who's helmed clips for Green Day, My Chemical Romance and the All-American Rejects, not to mention this year's indie-riffic feature "(500) Days of Summer", invaded Piru to shoot a video for "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To," the first single off their upcoming Raditude album. And they decided to turn the town into their very own kingdom, a place they're calling Weezerville.

"Marc Webb has created a kind of '50s small town for us to live in. We've christened it 'Weezerville,' and basically it's just populated by the four members of Weezer," frontman Rivers Cuomo told MTV News. "So we're just hanging out, driving around, filling up our trucks with gasoline. Basically being guys, and that's what Weezerville is like."

There's a distinctly "Pleasantville" feel to the place. The streets are clean; the sky is bright; the people — all of whom are doppelgängers of Cuomo and company (no word on whether Lil Wayne is a resident) — are polite. In fact, Weezerville is positively idyllic, until a femme fatale played by actress Odette Yustman (fun fact: She was in "Kindergarten Cop") arrives on the scene. And things start to change.

"The idea of the video is really simple: It's a town that's made up of clones of Weezer. There are multiple versions of Brian and Patrick and Scott and Rivers, and they're just going about their business, until one day, this woman shows up," Webb said. "And after that, everything basically goes to hell."

And while he can't spill all the details of what happens, Cuomo did say that fans can expect carnage ... of the bloody, disfiguring variety.

"We all lose our focus, our concentration," he laughed. "The next thing you know, accidents start happening."

• Weezer

Rivers Cuomo
Photo: MTV News

By now, you are probably aware that on Weezer's upcoming Raditude album (a.k.a. "the one with the dog on the cover"), frontman Rivers Cuomo has decided to shake things up, working with the All-American Rejects' Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler, Butch Walker and super-producer Dr. Luke.

But the shaking didn't stop there. Perhaps taking a cue from Girl Talk or millions of amateur mash-up auteurs out there, Cuomo has recruited none other than Lil Wayne to contribute a verse to a song on the album.

"Weezer is always trying something new," Cuomo told MTV News. "Last year, we put out The Red Album. We loved that album, but this is 2009. It's time to do something totally different. So I reached out to some friends of mine in different genres: Jermaine Dupri, for example, king of R&B, I wrote a song with him called 'Can't Stop Partying.' It was a real challenge for me, taking his ideas, which are very slick, R&B party [ideas], and giving it some kind of edge, some darkness, making it work with rock, making it work with Weezer.

"Not only that, but we got Lil Wayne to come in and do a rap on it," he continued. "Any other rapper would've just done, 'Yay, we're partying! Let's drink and have fun,' but he gave it the edge I was looking for. You can hear in his voice, it sounds so dark, like he was gonna get shot or something when he walks out of the studio. So I was real happy that everyone involved got what we were going for."

While a Weezer/Weezy collabo does seem a bit odd, it's keeping in theme with Raditude's party-hearty ethos. And it's not like Wayne is new to the rock game, either. Last year, he appeared on Fall Out Boy's Folie à Deux, and then there's his much-delayed "rock" album, Rebirth, which is set to be released in December.

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Weezer's Scott Shriner, Brian Bell, and Rivers Cuomo
Photo: Chris Weeks/ WireImage

After confounding some diehards with vocals from all four band members on their self-titled 2008 album, , Weezer are heading back into the familiar Rivers Cuomo-only rock pocket on the upcoming Raditude (October 27). Weezer are heading back into the rock pocket on the upcoming Raditude (October 27). Rhythm guitarist Brian Bell promised that fans of the group's beloved 1994 self-titled debut and 1996's beloved Pinkerton will be more than pleased.

"It's very upbeat and it's fun and exciting and hopefully a bit unique," said Bell on Friday, the same day the group debuted their personal online radio station. "It's definitely getting back to the rock element of Weezer that might have been lost a bit for a second. It's kind of like taking the blue album and mixing it with Pinkerton and then throwing in some of Maladroit. The tempos are faster for sure." Unlike their previous album, though, the only voice you'll hear on Raditude is singer Cuomo. But, for the first time in their career, the band brought some outside songwriters in to help this time around.

Among the 14 songs vying for contention on the disc are ones written by hip-hop producer Jermaine Dupri ("Let It All Hang Out"), a ballad written with the Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler of the All-American Rejects ("Put Me Back Together"), as well as songs written with album co-producer Butch Walker (the high school reunion snapshot "The Girl Got Hot") and tunes penned alongside sugar pop wizard Dr. Luke (Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Katy Perry). Other cuts that could make the cut are "Trippin' Down the Freeway," "I'm Your Daddy" and "Can't Stop Partying."

Bell said both Walker and the album's other co-producer, Garrett "Jacknife" Lee (U2, R.E.M., the Hives) had powerful, positive and very different impacts on the album's sound. "I could see us continuing to work with Butch in the future ... he brought it back around to Weezer rock music and us playing together as a band," Bell explained. "I thought we were going a bit too far left with some of the stuff [on the last album], like, 'Wait, this doesn't sound like Weezer at all.' "

One of Bell's favorite songs is one Lee worked on, "Run Over By a Truck," in which he said the producer encouraged him to play his guitar almost like a violin. "He had me picking really fast high up on the neck in what I call 'butterfly picking,' " he said. "He would plug anything into anything to get something interesting, even if it sounded crappy."

With Cuomo firmly back in the vocal and songwriting lead — the guitarist said he didn't contribute anything this time around, saving his songs for the debut from upcoming solo project, the Relationship — Bell said to expect a more straight-ahead sound, but with Cuomo's signature lyrical quirkiness. "We've never written with outside people before, but somehow, oddly enough, it works."

Weezer, who are on the road with Blink-182, recently primed the pump with the parenthetically swinging "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To," which was leaked on the Internet a few weeks ago. Bell said the band is also planning to release a rarities compilation "real soon" in the vein of Cuomo's two Alone demo releases, though he didn't know when that might drop.

And, in the best news of all for those who love to throw up the W, he promised that the band plans to tour "a lot more than in the past" to support the new album.

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Weezer's Brian Bell, Scott Shriner, and Rivers Cuomo
Photo: Jason Merritt/ Getty Images

Nirvana to Miley Cyrus. Green Day to Howlin' Wolf. Jimi Hendrix to Jimmy Eat World. Obscure sample-happy Queens one-man band Kid America and the Action Figures to, of course, current tourmates Blink-182.

Those are some of the artists you'll hear on "Radio Weezer," the personal radio station the band launched Friday (August 28). The station follows in the footsteps of similar "Artist Personal Experience" radio stations from Christina Aguilera and the Eagles' Joe Walsh — who share management with Weezer — that have debuted in recent weeks.

A dip into the playlist Friday morning revealed some of the usual suspects (Ramones, R.E.M., Foo Fighters, Nirvana, the Pixies), as well as a few unexpected, more obscure surprises (songwriter Landon Pigg, MxPx, Frank Zappa) and, not surprisingly, Weezer's back catalog, including the band's toe-tappingly retro-pop new single, "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To."

"It's a little insight into the things that turn us on and things we've been inspired by," said rhythm guitarist Brian Bell. "There's things that have inspired me like classical pieces by Franz Schubert, some soul pieces, some rock things and even things you've heard a million times but people should listen to again like the Beatles' 'Twist and Shout,' which has one of the most fantastic rock vocal deliveries ever. It embodies rock and roll."

With several hundred songs on the station, available at Clear Channel's IHeartRadio.com, the 24-hour channel will be constantly updated with new tunes and anecdotes from bandmembers.

Bell said his bandmates all worked on their own separate playlists, and his hope is that young musicians and fans who look up to Weezer might gain a window into what their icons listen to, like drummer Pat Wilson, who tells a touching story about someone puking on his chair at a Van Halen show as an introduction to the group's boogie shuffle "Mean Street."

"I'm embarrassed by some of the things I picked because I take it very seriously, but I don't want it to come back and haunt me," Bell admitted. "But I tried not to pick things just because they were obscure and cool." Then again, alongside songs by early influences like the B-52s, Bob Dylan and the Cars, he did pick some more obscure stuff, like songs by Kid America and the Action Figures, early synth punk act Suicide and the unreleased "Ugly Things" from his side project the Relationship, whose debut is due out later this year.

"I'm sure [bassist] Scott [Shriner] picked some Mastodon, Pat probably picked Van Halen, and [singer] Rivers [Cuomo] probably picked Miley Cyrus," he said. "Part of the point of this was picking songs that people are not going to hear when they turn on the radio, even satellite radio."

In fact, the mix includes a wide-ranging menu of sounds that you'd find on a particularly hip college kid's iPod, or one of those long-lost alternative-rock stations from the 1990s. It bounces from Rise Against one minute to Alice Cooper, Elliott Smith, Frank Sinatra, the Beastie Boys, John Lennon, Mr. Bungle, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Dave Brubeck, Big Audio Dynamite and Frank Zappa, with stops off at unexpected ports of call like 1970s soft rocker Gordon Lightfoot, the Buena Vista Social Club and jazz giant John Coltrane.

Weezer's next album, Raditude, is due October 27, and the band is currently on the road with Blink-182.

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Weezer's Rivers Cuomo
Photo: Chris Weeks/ WireImage

You wouldn't exactly consider the guys in Weezer particularly "rad." It would appear, however, that they're trying very hard to change that.

On October 27, Weezer will release their seventh studio album, titled Raditude. The band revealed the title in a post on their official Web site less than a week after they announced the release date for the album and the name of its first single: "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To".

"I Want You To" wasn't supposed to hit radio stations until August 25, but it actually leaked on Monday, forcing a few overzealous outlets to begin playing it that night. According to Weezer.com, the song will now premiere on radio stations nationwide on Tuesday (August 18).

The single — combined with the just-announced title and previously released new songs with titles like "The Girl Got Hot," "I'm Your Daddy" and "Can't Stop Partying" — seems to indicate that Weezer are heading in a pretty pro-party direction for album number seven, a shift for a band that has made a career out of exploring the decidedly geekier side of life. There were rumors that Weezer were considering calling the album Bring It, but according frontman Rivers Cuomo's Twitter, they changed the name to Raditude at the insistence of "The Office" star Rainn Wilson. (No, we could not make that up if we tried.)

The album is being produced by Jacknife Lee and Butch Walker, with mixing by Rich Costey. Weezer will join up with Blink-182's tour on August 25 in Toronto, and the two acts will also co-headline the Virgin Mobile Free Fest on August 30 at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.

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Weezer's Rivers Cuomo
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/ Getty Images

Weezer fans, rejoice. On October 27, the geek-rock gods will return with their seventh studio album, a yet-untitled affair that sees the band partying hard and getting parenthetical.

That's because, following in the grand grammatical style of classics like Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", Weezer have announced that the first single from the album is called "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To," and it's shipping to radio August 25.

That's all according to a series of posts on Weezer.com, and the band promises that more information about the new album — title, track list, color, whether Rivers Cuomo will look like Bruno Kirby in "City Slickers" this time around — will be revealed soon. They had already posted info about Rich Costey (who mixed their 2008 Red Album) mixing the new record alongside drummer Pat Wilson. And last month, Weez premiered a trio of puzzlingly party-friendly new songs ("The Girl Got Hot," "I'm Your Daddy" and, uh, "Can't Stop Partying," a version of which appeared on Cuomo's odds-n-sods Alone II album) at the Jisan Valley Rock Festival in Seoul, South Korea.

A spokesperson for the band could not confirm whether those songs will end up on album number seven — or on the mysterious "to-be-announced special non-physical release" version Weezer wrote about in an earlier post on their site — but he did reveal that the album is produced by Jacknife Lee and Butch Walker, with Costey handling the mixing duties.

Regardless, Weezer fans might not have to wait very long to hear the new songs for themselves: Weez join Blink-182's rolling rock caravan August 25 in Toronto, and the two acts will also co-headline the Virgin Mobile Free Fest on August 30 at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.

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