Select MP3's - Indie Pop

The La's - One album was all they gave us and it's not enough, but at least we got one.

• Liberty Ship - The layered sounds in this song give this a Headphones Required At Least Once feeling without also making you feel like you need to toke up.
• There She Goes - Sixpence None the Richer covered this song, and while they were more commercially successful with it than the La's, the La's original is better than the cover. The entire album is solid, if a tad easily moved to the background.

Aimee Mann - The lead singer of the 80's band 'Til Tuesday (their biggest hit: Voices Carry) who got much, much better when she went solo. She has a simple voice that she knows how to use with precision and her writing, both musically and lyrically is fantastic.

• Fifty Years After the Fair - "And how beautiful it was tomorrow / we'll never have a day of sorrow"
• Ghost World - Nick Hornby in Songbook: "Her song 'Ghost World,' incidentally, contains a verse indicative of what a fine writer she is: 'Everyone I know is acting weird or way to cool / they hang out by the pool / So I just read a lot and ride my bike around the school.' Tese few words do the job of perhaps as many as seven hundred recently published semiautobiographical but deeply sensitive first novels.
• I Know There's a Word for This - A great melancholy song where the focus is on fixating on something other the pain. "I know there's a word for this / I know 'cause it's in the dictionary / And when I find what it is / I'll write it down in case it comes up again / I'll be certain to avoid it"
• Jacob Marley's Chain - It's a pop song with Dickensian reference. Awesome. "Well I had a little metaphor to state my case / it encompassed the condition of the human race / but to my dismay it left without a trace / except for the sound of Jacob Marley's Chain"
• Save Me - From the Magnolia Soundtrack. There's not much to differentiate this from most of Mann's work; she writes great, genuine songs, and this is one of them. Plus, the movie's neat.

The Magnetic Fields - Stephin Merritt is a genius. He writes gem after gem after gem of pure pop songs that take the conventions and more throw them against the wall and rearrange them than just shaking them up a bit, and his lyrics are clever without being twee. Their magnum opus, 69 Love Songs is a three disk set that has maybe one or two losers out of 69 songs.

• Acoustic Guitar - "Acoustic Guitar, you can have your own car / Just bring me back my girl / she always love the sound of your strum / you made her think maybe I wasn't so dumb"
• All My Little Words - "Now that you've made me want to die / You tell me that you're unboyfriendable"
• Come Back From San Francisco - "Should pretty boys and discos / distract you from your novel"
• Epitaph From My Heart - The opening's more than a bit quirky, but it drips with awesomeness.
• I Think I need a new Heart - This song was featured in the movie Pieces of April. "You've lied too, but it's a sin that I can't tell the truth / 'cause it all comes out wrong unless I put in a song"
• I Wish I Had an Evil Twin - Don't we all?
• Papa Was a Rodeo - The best homo-erotic song about a trucker. Ever. (Line stolen from Rilo Kiley)
• Reno Dakota - "Alas and Alack, you have just dissappeared / It makes me drink beer"
• The Death of Ferdinand De Sassure - "You can't use a bulldozer / to study orchids"
• Time Enough For Rocking When We're Old - With a title that great, how can the song be anything but? I wouldn't know.

Mojave 3 - They have two great, one mediocre, one bad and one album that I haven't heard. They're mostly soft and sad, with a terrible beauty to their songs.

• Candle Song 3 A very slow, melancholy song
• In Love With a View - I don't know how you can't love the combination of slide guitar and Canada references. "I had a plan that was built on thinking too much / Canadian winters at home with your sisters / The romance was hard to ignore / you were beautiful and I was happy to fall"
• Pictures - Neil Halstead continues his perfect lyrical content and excellent songs of quiet sadness.
• Return to Sender - "I stand all day with a rose in my teeth / Give it to the first girl that will say something sweet / She says 'Thank you, but this flower will die within the hour. Return to sender'"

The Postal Service - Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, also sings for this band, who've not gotten nearly the airplay that they deserve or that Death Cab has gotten.

• Nothing Better Call and Answer? Check. Great vocal performances? check. Good but not distracting synth sounds? Check. Wonderful song.
• Sleeping In - This song combines JFK and global warming with ignorance.

The Submarines - They have a great story about how their band formed, but you'll pick up on it by listening to the record and the music's better.

• Brighter Discontent - A great song about not being able to move on.
• Peace and Hate - "I should be gone, Cast away / and still I love you through all peace and hate / in light of all darkest things, the fire glimmers and the darkness sings"
• Ready or Not - "ready or not we're gonna be hear tomorrow / Wild with hope in spite of everything"

The Weepies - I like the Weepies, but I don't often remember how much. They're more than just a pleasent forgettable pop band, but that's precisely the type of music they make.

• Nobody Knows Me at All - "I don't give a damn / I'm happy as a clam / Nobody know's me at all"
• Suicide Blonde - Thankfully, this isn't a cover. At 1:38, it's almost too short to register. Almost.
• Take it From Me - Melodic and slightly jangly, this is about how to try and describe someone that means more to you than you have words.