The lead single from the alt-country powerhouse’s new disc Blame It On Gravity is Dance With Me, courtesy of the Onion’s AV Club.

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

The Charlatans (aka “The Charlatans UK”, if you’re an American lawyer) have released their new album for free. Free! Sure, Radiohead did it, but they’re filthy rich, so it’s pleasantly surprising to see the boys from Birmingham follow suit.

Get it via XFM.

Jill keeps an ever-changing list of free mp3s on her website. If you like Jill, and you should, then you should check out how she’s financing her next record: a fan-funded “telethon”.

$25 gets you an advance copy of the disc; $100 gets you that plus a t-shirt saying you’re a junior executive producer; for $1,000, Jill will write you your own theme song; and for $25,000, you can sing on the album.

It might be easy to dismiss dada as just a one-hit wonder, based on their 1992 single “Dizz Knee Land”. But it’s a shame to do so; with each subsequent album their songcraft has grown richer and deeper.

Their site has four tracks for download, including Baby Really Loves Me and a live version of Playboy In Outerspace.

Jonathan Coulton has just released Re: Vos Cerveaux, one of his extant hits, redone in French. Why? Je ne sais pas.

Rumors of a possible reunion for Live Earth have reminded me of just how great Spin̈al Tap are. Their earlier flower-power days were eh, but their late-70s and early-80s heyday made them a metal standby. Their 90s output (notably Break Like the Wind) brought a more studio-polished sound that still had some good hooks.

Their official site is down for repairs, but they’re linking to a prominent fan site now, through which you can find a bunch of tracks including the classics Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight and Big Bottom, as well as Break’s The Majesty of Rock.

No, not the cartoon. The movie.
No, not the actresses in the movie. The band providing their sound — Letters to Cleo’s Kay Hanley and Matthew Sweet among others. With songs written by Hanley, Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, members of the Go-Go’s, and other luminaries.

Think what you will of the movie, but the soundtrack’s guitar-buzz power-pop was a chunk of pure joy. Just listen to the selections that Idolator has available: Three Small Words and Shapeshifter.

We’ve mentioned CSS before. Well, Gorilla vs Bear has a terrific track of CSS, live on the BBC, covering L7’s “Pretend We’re Dead”. Check it out.

One of the first things that drew me to the much-missed old-style mp3.com was Logan Whitehurst, a young man doing absurd, innocent pop music in the vein of early They Might Be Giants. Under the name “Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club”, he released gems like Calculator Love and Waffle of Death, which amused me to no end, as did the hilarious Farkle!!. Whitehurst later went on to join The Velvet Teen.

I just found out today that Whitehurst died of brain cancer last month. I can’t tell you how sad this makes me. Thankfully his archives are still available, and his family has kept his site up and running. They’ve also founded the Remember Logan Foundation, so if you enjoy his music, please check it out.