These are two songs to be played in sequence. (There's also another song, at the end, that you can play after.) Seriously -- you trust me, right? Download these first two, put them in your tracklist, and play one after the other. In order. Like so:

1. Clogs - "Limp Waltz". This is a piece that's been sitting in a corner of my mind, looking up at me when I look at it, otherwise just sitting there. The best mornings are the ones when I get up in time to sit in the early light and put on my headphones and listen to this, still not quite here. I look at the piece in the corner of my mind and it acknowledges me and I acknowledge it, all soft dawn looks, and we both turn to gaze out the window.

This is classical music with only a kiss, a long black kiss, of indie-rock's texture and structure. It's so slow you can watch its fingers move. So slow you can hear Padme Newsome's viola turning in his hands, dark to darker, darker to brighter, brighter to light, to hope. It flowers, but the flowers lie there on the table waiting for someone to pick them up.

Unfortunately, Clogs are also burdened with hipster credentials: enough to fog things up and make it hard to see clearly. Sharing members with The National, admirers of Sufjan Stevens, tapped by the Bell Orchestre to tour with that Arcade Fire-buzzing troupe. But Clogs are at their best when they move away from Rachel's circular fables and the Orchestre's jazzy tracts - toward Reich and Mahler, long spaces and unrepeating sounds.

[buy]

2. Anita Humes - "Don't Fight It Baby". But look, we're not gonna get through this Tuesday with you just sitting there. Don't fight it, baby. You can't win. Don't fight it, baby

So off - rampadama ding-aling of drums, ticktocking percussion, - trundle down the steps and hop on along. Don't fight it baby.

Question: Does she really have her "voodoo working"?
Answer: No, but because she says so, yes.

Learn a lesson from Anita and her Northern Soul song, from her gang who will back her up, from the clapclap hands that make sure you make it through every set of doors you need to get through. Learn a lesson - and that lesson is, inevitably, don't fight it. Baby.

[try to buy ?]

Milo McLaughlin - "I Ain't Your Mailman".

I'm not quite done. This is a toss-off song, some scraps of guitar, some chords, a guitar and a microphone that's turned on. It's a song of "justs" and yet it's so phenomenally perfect, so entirely right, that the front of your face swings open and the id inside yells "YES".

Because seriously - This here request is merely humiliatin'... you're asking me to pick up the mail that is waitin'. Well. I ain't your mail man.

Work sucks, sometimes. Work sucks. And here's Milo who sings it just right, who sings it pissed-off and silly and pissed-off and happy (because he's off work), part Mark E Smith and part Leadbelly, showing me the way that the blues has gotta be here, right here, and in this day and age. He's so frustrated that he can't help but laugh, that he can't help but go home and record a song. And the song: true and awesome.

[info and more music]

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Elsewhere:

A terrific music video for Hello Saferide's "My Best Friend" - animations that slip in like shadows and dance like a dance party. And Annika's a cutie.

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Lots of really great stuff has been posted lately, I think. But we rely on you guys to tell us how we're doing. When you neglect us I promise we feel sad and wonder if we're screwing up. :(

Please listen to Agent Simple (Magnetic Fields crossed with fun! [!!!!]), The Shelleys, The Winks, White Foliage and The Rollercoaster Project, and tell us what you think. About the music, about the words, about both. Or just about how you are. How are you?