Some new music

I was talking with Devon about On Hold... after last week's podcast and we've decideed that we'd like to try to stick a bit more to some topics during the show. Not that we don't have topics now, but we tend to get a bit... tangential sometimes. So we're going to try to work at least one 'feature' into each show. I hope Devon follows through and actually does some planning to back up this idea, but I guess we'll see. This week we're going to talk about some of the new music we've been listening to, hopefully with a couple song clips and some commentary. So to that end, I've been looking into some new stuff and trying to see what all the hip kids are into these days. I thought I'd share some of the good stuff I discovered.

I'm not particularly out of the new music loop, but I'm not totally into it either. I love music, swaying mostly towards the alt-indie-emo-postpunk rock stuff, but I find it a challenge to keep up with whats on the charts and more importantly whats cool thats off the charts. Sure I get keep up with some newer interesting stuff from Devon, and listening to other podcasts (thank you Greg and Lisa) , or reading blogs; usually though I'll go a 3 or 4 month stretch totally out of touch with the music 'scene' and then I'll just spend a day or two and try to immerse myself in finding a whole bunch of new stuff. I've really come to realize too that there is just way too much great music out there to keep track of everything, unless you really dedicated yourself to it all the time. So you might imagine that I'm a big fan of the 'if you like this band you might like...' and 'people who bought this also bought this...' lists. Thats one of the best ways I find new and upcoming stuff. Yesterday though I also browsed my way through this Metacritic list of the highest rated albums of '06, Blender's list of 25 bands to look for in '07, and Rolling Stone's List of the 100 Best songs of the year. I found some great stuff too.

Check out some of the music I just found. Maybe you guys have some ideas of other bands I might like. If you've got any good ideas, please leave 'em in the comments thread.

The Cold War Kids - Hang Me Up To Dry



Ben Kweller - Sundress



Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah - Over and Over Again



Birdmonster - Cause You Can



Tokyo Police Club - Nature of the Experiment



So I guess thats probably about as much video as I should really put into a single blog post, but there really are a lot of cool cool bands out there. All of the links I provided go to the bands MySpace pages, I know, I know, but at elast they've got more music on them that you can check out for free. Also check out some of these other cool bands, The Sounds, The Hold Steady, Tapes N Tapes, Teddybears, She Wants Revenge, Yo La Tengo, French Kicks, The Long Winters, Band of Horses, and Dirty Pretty Things...

Let me know what you're listening to.