Back in February, Ray Davies revealed that duets with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Alex Chilton, and Lucinda Williams for a forthcoming album of reworked Kinks classics due sometime this year were already in the can. In addition to Springsteen’s version of “Better Things” and Bon Jovi’s “Celluloid Heroes,” however, Davies has recorded songs with what’s become an even more impressive list of collaborators for the forthcoming LP.

As Hipsters United points out, producer/drummer Kerry Brown revealed this week that Smashing Pumpkins mastermind Billy Corgan just recorded a version of 1981 Kinks hit “Destroyer” for the record. What’s more, an album update on Davies’ official site revealed: “Ray has recently recorded with Amy MacDonald, Paloma Faith, Mumford & Sons, Spoon and Frank Black.”

The to-be-announced collaborative album — which no longer includes a previously reported track by the Killers — is still on schedule for a 2010 release.

All signs are sadly pointing to this week being Conan O’Brien’s last as the host of the Tonight Show, but the Cone Bone is going out with a bang, at least, plotting farewell appearances by Barry Manilow, Tom Hanks, Will Ferrell, and a previously scheduled performance by Austin’s own Spoon on tonight’s episode.

It’s all uphill from Ke$ha, I suppose, but damn if Britt Daniel and company didn’t rock the f$ck out of Transference single “Written In Reverse” on CoCo’s Craigslisted Tonight Show set. (Plus, how ‘bout Max Weinberg’s Led Zeppelin cover licensing money grab FTW?! Better than stealing an unopened box of ballpoint Bics, I say.)

Watch Spoon on Conan here or below:

Here are a few of today’s bookmarked links of note…

• MGMT’s Andrew Vanwyngarden dropped a slew of deets on LP2 during a Q&A with Spin, including new song titles (“Lady Dada’s Nightmare”,”It’s Working”, etc.), influences (“The song is mostly about Ecstasy”), and more.
• Spoon put their 7th album, Transference, up on NPR’s site for free streaming, and unveiled a North American tour.
• Crumbler pointed us to Jet’s revenge for Pitchfork’s internet famous Shine On review. Not sure that “One Hipster One Bullet” will go over too well in the blogosphere.
• Flavorwire explored “The Weird Science of Billy Corgan.”
• Oh, and you heard about the free Dirty Projectors 7” right?

In case you haven’t heard, David Byrne takes his blogging very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that past entries to his official journal have taken on Czech Republic steel foundry/coal mine complexes, “The Kindle Experience,” and Bono. But in his latest rant/essay, Byrne goes a bit more apocalyptic. Check out “Internet Antichrist” here.

Whereas Fake Tom Waits joined Twitter in the early days, the real Tom Waits didn’t start tweeting until today. (It’s probably just an intern, but at least it’s an official ghost Twitterer or something.) Anti Records pointed their followers at the new page today with: “All the Wit and Wisdom of Tom Waits is now on Twitter! Follow @anti_tomwaits.”

So what’s he tweeting in there?