According to one Nick Green, “Screamo bands covering Top 40 songs [is a] full blown epidemic.” He’s right: Lil Wayne. The Fray. The Postal Service. The Knack, for Christ’s sake (personally, I love that last one–it’s good background music for shot-gunning 16-ounce Natty Lights). In an ongoing special over at Decibel’s Deciblog, contributors put 16 screamo covers head to head in what will go down in history as the greatest Mallcore bracket ever made.

In the opening salvo, I played Drop Dead, Gorgeous‘ cover of “Swing” against I Set My Friends On Fire’s (pictured above) cover of “Crank Dat Soulja Boy.”  In the same post, Axl Rosenberg of Metalsucks (featured in Amanda Hess’ column this week) measured Brokencyde’s cover of Flo Rida’s “Low” against A Static Lullaby’s cover of Britney Spears‘ “Toxic.”

New brackets will be posted throughout this and next week (today’s post features a screamo cover of Santana’s “Smooth” so insipid that I spread the mustard in my mouth), so check back often!

A weekly roundup of unreleased songs, new singles, and assorted musical detritus as it trickles out to the Web.

Lil Wayne: “Prom Queen”
Ignore the braggadocio and oblique verse of Tha Carter III: Turns out that Lil Wayne is neither thug nor playful screwball. No, deep inside Wayne’s thoroughly inked breast beats the heart of a teenage wolf-boy spurned. On this single from his forthcoming album The Rebirth, which apparently skews rap-rock, Wayne gets all bitter about the girl he wasn’t cool enough to get during high school. But the rapper is aware that living well is the best revenge. “Now the prom queen is crying and sitting outside my door,” sings Wayne from the top of bling mountain while guitars of adolescent trauma weep in the background. P.O.D., it ain’t.

Of Montreal: “First Time High” (Remix of “An Eluardian Instance” by Jon Brion)
Rather than extending Of Montreal’s sorta schizo new single “An Eluardian Instance” for the dance floor, producer Jon Brion reorganizes the song into a more manageable nugget by manufacturing a chorus, a bridge, and hooky refrain. The process of trying to turn frontman Kevin Barnes’ loopy songcraft into something concise must have been maddening (perhaps analogous to editing David Lee Roth’s autobiography) but Brion really makes this pop.

Blues Control: “Tenku You”
Make a mashup out of Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride and Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports and wind up with, well, this. Using cassette loops, piano, and plenty of scrunchy-faced pentatonic jamming, New York City duo Blues Control continues its exploration of the dankest and swampiest reaches of outer space.

Theophilus London: “Crazy Cousins”
Heavy Latin rhythm drives this snippet from Brooklyn rapper Theophilus London’s most recent mixtape. London rattles off some OK lines about his “crazy cousins”, but his skills aren’t quite a match for the ebullient bongo-jamming.

With the new year comes not-so-new traditions: purging your closet of heinous holiday sweaters, resolving to dissolve your waistline and, if you’re Rolling Stone , looking to Top 40 lists and tired-and-true troubadours to compile your list of the 50 “Best” Albums of the Year.

Read More “Rolling Stone reaches new lows with ‘Top 50 Albums’” »