We’d like to imagine you reading this issue of Anthem on a jet bound to Micronesia or in the back of a road-tripping car cruising through the sweltering beauty of Baja, Mexico. If not, rest assured—there’s plenty of vicarious traveling to be had between the covers of this, our annual On the Road issue.

The objective of our tight-knit staff at Anthem has always been connecting dots, surveying what everyone is talking about, and combining that with our own tastes and biases and obsessions. It’d be pure hubris to aim at comprehensive coverage of the music world, but every now and then, we like to pat ourselves on the back. Last year’s New York music special is a case in point; we happily watched Dirty Projectors, Yeasayer, MGMT and company catapult to indie fame in the months following. Hopefully you’ll uncover a few similar gems in our annual Music Special’s Bands to Watch spread—and don’t miss the additional fifteen artists featured on anthemmagazine.com. And as always filling out the rest of the issue are the things we’ve found most intriguing in the worlds of art, film, fashion and culture.

Welcome, dear readers, to our annual Masculine/Feminine issue, our chance to wallow in the joy, angst and general weirdness of gender and sexuality. This issue marks an exciting milestone: Party animal Andrew W.K. launches a new advice column and sits down with electronic superstar Moby to talk about monogamy, romantic guilt and whether free love is possible in the modern age.

For 2008 we’re dedicated to remaining true to our roots, despite the inevitable bumps, lurches and growing pains. We’ve watched other independent titles go off the rails, ditching their original fan base in order to serve up barely disguised advertorial for cooled-up investment bankers—BlackBook, anyone? We’ve grimaced as mainstream media cannibalizes the cutting edge, feeding from the same reservoir of buzz that the Internet has both blessed and cursed us with. More painfully, we’ve fought and suffered the wrath of egomaniacal publicists who think their clients equally belong on the cover of Anthem as they do on Entertainment Weekly—publicists, moreover, who treat independent media like a giant hand-job machine built to service their well-protected clients. That said, we’re not pessimistic. We’re happy as hell! It’s a new year with fresh challenges, even if it sometimes seems like independent publishing is being killed by corporate cash and our shared hype machine. As always, speaking for ourselves—saying what we mean, and meaning what we say.

Sigur Rós are a reclusive bunch—they’re not too fond of the press, they say, because in their native Iceland everyone tends to leave you alone. It must be easy to disappear in a country whose population barely tops 300,000 people—and where everyone, doubtlessly, seems to be a third cousin of Björk. For the band, the familiar landscape of their native country informed a movie, Heima, which got us thinking about the concept of home and belonging. So what’s heima in the twenty-first century, then? It might just be a state of mind, some ridiculous ideal, a place where everything feels right. It might be the city you move to next, or the city you just left. It might be in a tree house in the rain forests of Bolivia, communing with rhesus monkeys. Or perhaps it’s something a lot like Anthem: an unreal work in progress, far-flung community, a lively circus of ideas.

It's that time of year again, when always-fashionable Anthemites feel compelled to take things up a notch. The fall brings crisper weather and a parade of fashion weeks from New York to Barcelona. To celebrate, we've pulled together our most extensive fashion issue yet, taking progressive couture's pulse in a way that the 4 lb. Vogues and Vanity Fairs of the world just don't get . You'll find a rundown of this season's zeitgeist, from the rock 'n' roll drama of Todd Lynn to Gucci's resort line, K Karl Lagerfeld, Raf Simons' strongest year yet and our traditional wrap-up from Paris. Two beautiful actresses (Amelia Warner and Vicky McClure) got stylish for our lens, and post-punk heroine Siouxsie discussed how hot-air balloons inspired her album name.

Over the past years, we’ve surveyed the Danish creative scene, dodged bullets in the former Yugoslavia, and caught the hustle and flow of South Africa’s hip-hop movement. If you’re anything like us, you have a problem keeping still, and it’s when we’re traveling that our hunger for new, fresh experiences is sated. And yes, it’s true—with the American dollar a bit impotent and airfare to Europe topping $1,000, this summer can be a bit of a bitch when it comes to international gallivanting. That doesn’t mean you need to stay at home. Plenty of options exist for the scrappy and economical traveler, from the brand-new carpooling service at GoLoco.org to CouchSurfing.com, a social network that’ll find you a free place to crash from Montreal to Marseille. Use this issue as a guide and an inspiration for your own travels.

Okay, okay, we get it. Rave’s back, Paris is currently home to some of the hottest electro labels, Australia’s churning out some of the best of-the-moment bands and Sweden is swarming with singer/songwriters. Over the past few years we’ve just about covered it all—so while assembling the lineup for our music special we really had to ask ourselves: “Is there anything new under the sun?” The answer is a resounding “yes,” and that’s reflected in the eclectic content we’ve pulled together for Anthem 28: The Music Issue. We decided to take a look around at what drives us musically and decided that profiling our favorite cover bands, surveying nightlife moguls from around the world and getting the scoop on DIY house shows was enough to wet the pallet of those readers who may thumb there noses at mainstream radio drivel.

Relations between men and women are only a little less complicated than nuclear physics, so you'll need to treat our first Masculine/Feminine issue with care. Consider Issue 27 our modest attempt to take a bite out of the Masculine/Feminine issue from a variety of angles. We've got exclusive fiction from Neil LaBute, always a provocative critic of the peculiar friction between men and women. The co-authors of an upcoming book on the teen magazine Sassy explain the late publication's unique and all-too-rare vision, while the editor of Playgirl asks whether straight women actually want to see naked dudes (the answer is yes). We also take a look at how the Army hawks machismo like it was Coca-Cola, ask Demetri Martin whether comedy groupies exist and present the usual rundown of what's best in culture during March and April.

In typically unconventional Anthem fashion, we've taken the concept of "sport" and let our imaginations run wild. Featured artists Deerhoof contributed the soundtrack to cover star Justin Theroux's directorial debut and Mr. Theroux himself is a pretty impressive break dancer, so it's convenient that this issue also reports back from the global breaking showdown in Sao Paulo, Brazil... In short, unexpected synchronicities abound, and we think it's a good sign. This issue, you'll get the lowdown on everything from homoeroticism in French wrestling to fictional accounts of bum fights; along the way, we'll share the secrets of border volleyball with our Mexican neighbors, explore surf spots in Baja from a dirt bike, jump off cliffs in rally cars and otherwise test the sane limits of human endurance James Mercer of The Shins sits down with Sondre Lerche to talk shop.