Freezepop just collected three awards in the Boston Phoenix’s Best Music Poll, and for good reason. Please to enjoy Less Talk More Rokk.

Alt-rock legend Juliana Hatfield has thrown literally dozens of tracks onto her Downloads page, and they’re free, sort of… they’re on the “honor system“:

You can decide that ownership of this song is your right and freely distribute the files to your friends and to the people who also think it’s their right, without payment.

Or, you can support the artist who wrote and recorded this song and click the PayPal button at the top of the page and send Juliana a contribution.

I particularly like Better Than Nothing and Now That I Have Found You.

Lifestyle are a modern-day New Wave band. That is, they create music that sounds like the early-80’s New Wave stuff you remember fondly from the early days of MTV, back when the “M” in “MTV” wasn’t vestigial. And if that wasn’t a selling point enough, their lead singer is also one of the three members of Freezepop, another retro band who you can’t help but love unless you are dead inside.

Their Sounds page has about a dozen free tunes. My favorites are the driving Come On, which could have popped right out of 1983 if it weren’t for the lyrical reference to e-mail, and the Ultravoxy The Day and the Night.

Played Guitar Hero? One of the Boston acts in the game is Honest Bob, a band I’ve been a fan of since, well, since I used to work with two of the guys a dozen years back.

Honest Bob take a great mix of musical influences (Pixies, TMBG and Hüsker Dü being some of the more obvious) and add to that some sharp lyrical wit and quirky subject matter. Songs about Noam Chomsky, Liz Phair, Hale-Bopp, Tatooine, or nature’s harmonic simultaneous 4-day time cube? Yep, they got that.

You can hear sound clips from their albums on their music page, or download a few tracks from their first album: the Pixies homage She’s Gone or the equally rockin’ Organism.

Five O’Clock Shadow are a rock-oriented a cappella band who have been performing for 15 years. One of their number graduated college with me; we were both in a cappella groups on campus, and was a friend of a friend afterwards, but I didn’t get a chance to actually hear FOCS until my friend Wes joined the band two years later. (Wes now sings with the House Jacks.)

Their media page offers four tunes, including my favorite, Few and Far Between.

F-R-E-squared-Z-E-P-O-P. Freezepop forever.

Freezepop are an electroclash band – that is, retro-style synthpop. A Boston and Internet staple for years, their audience grew manifold when their music made its way onto the video games Karaoke Revolution, Amplitude and FreQuency, thanks to their chief songwriter working at the company who made said games.

They’re silly and fun, and you have to admire any band whose sole instrument is a tiny little blippy Japanese box.

Their Music page has a bunch of free tracks, but I’m especially fond of the Bike Thief and Stakeout remixes.

(And be sure to check out their videos for “Freezepop Forever” and “Stakeout“.)

David Goodrich is a guitarist extraordinaire. He’s played with an impressive list of Boston-area musicians (I first saw him backing up Tim Gearan) but has released two instrumental albums of his own.

His recordings page features five tracks, including three off his folk-inspired Accidentals of the West. The title track, Accidentals of the West, is terrifically catchy, as are New/Old Joe and Flew.

But the hidden treasure is his production page, featuring work he’s done production on. Tracks from Peter Mulvey, Tim Gearan, and others.

The Pixies, Debaser. Still sounds great, fifteen years later. And of all the songs ever written about Salvadore Dali movies, undoubtedly the best.

I seem to have fallen in love with Meghan Toohey.

I saw her play with one of her earlier acts back in the late 90s, and semi-followed her as she became a big name on the local folk circuit. Several years back she formed a new band, the So and So’s, intending to move away from her folkie image into straight-out rock. I hadn’t ever heard them, so a few weeks back I decided to see if their Web site had any tracks.

And boy, does it. The band’s placed every single track from both of their albums (as well as both of Meghan’s solo discs) up for free on the Web. At 192 kpbs, no less! So I downloaded them and gave them a spin.

Holy Christ. Every single track is fantastic. I’m speechless. I can’t stop listening to them.

Try the sunny harmonies of On To You, the gritty emotion of Please You, or the production on Better or Tattoo. Hell, try ‘em all. Meghan’s angelic and expressive voice alone would make it worthwhile.

Yes, it’s a relationship doomed to fail. I, uh, don’t think I’m her type. But we’ll always have the songs, won’t we?

Until a few months ago I’d been long out of touch with my high school friend Wendy, a situation pleasantly remedied, especially since it led me to discover she’s half of The Cyanide Valentine. They just released their debut CD, Let It Rot, a catchy pile of snarling new-wave rock with touches of electronica and glam. They’ve got several tracks for download on their “Music” page.

The standout is You Are the Focus, which is like crack dipped in caramel, then wrapped in a skinny tie.