Recently, Kanye West brought back the regrettable use of autotune on his new album, in testament to the Cher in all of us, and perhaps as a dangerous indicator of the shape of things to come in modern hip-hop.

But there’s another trend in music that hopefully, unlike the unfortunate vocal effect, won’t go out of style any time soon.

I’m talking activism and music, and it’s well-meaning, less politically-charged kid-sister, philanthropy and music.

Almost 30 years ago an explosion happened in basements all across the East Coast. When Ian MacKaye, frontman of D.C. hardcore band Minor Threat, screamed the words “I got straight edge,” he incensed a generation and planted the seeds for a subculture that still exists today – eschewing alcohol, tobacco and recreational drug use.

Bay Area art-rock cutesters Deerhoof have had the pleasure of doing so in 2006, dosing the California coast with their brand of bombast and kitsch, playing off the release of 2005’s “The Runners Four.”

The Walkmen’s latest, “You & Me,” adds the sense of age and experience that they seemed to lack in previous albums – not to say that they hadn’t already established themselves as a tight, well-put-together band – but what they had in style and conviction, they lacked in naturalness and earnest.

As the University of Nevada, Reno and the city at large begin to scale up its efforts to fit into big-city britches, what with its fresh-faced buildings and chic, urban high-rise condos, it seems that it drags behind it a mindset that has yet to change in many ways.

For those who have been drooling over a new release from the “Juno” soundtrack’s principal crooner Kimya Dawson, please bear in mind that she has gone for a different drooling demographic this time.