I’ve somehow fallen into a half-assed polyphasic sleep schedule this week, so I’ve just been watching silly videos tonight in an attempt to stay awake until a decent hour, instead of sleeping through the evening and staying up all night.

It may be the sleep deprivation, but I thought they did quite a good job with this:

Seems like a fun office!

Man Man is a wild, hilarious band from Philadelphia. I’m not sure how to describe them, as they don’t really fit into any genre. Wikipedia uses “Viking-vaudeville, punk-wop, and rock-and-soul”, so I’ll go along with that.

“Engwish Bwudd” is from Six Demon Bag. It’s a great album, and I’m really looking forward to their next release, Rabbit Habits, that’s coming out this year. I’d love to see them live. Their personalities come out in the music, and I imagine they put on a fun show.

Bat For Lashes is a singer-songwriter from England. Listening to her album, Fur and Gold, is like walking through someone else’s creepy dream. I really enjoyed the whole album. She reminds me of a more mellow, less naive-appearing Bjork.

I really love this video for ‘What’s a Girl to Do?’ It was posted on Digg a while back, and I forgot about it until Motel De Moka posted the song in a playlist. It has an eery Donny Darko feel to it.

Neil Young, Canadian legend, really needs no introduction.

I received a new laptop for work on Friday, and I need to transfer all of my files over from my old laptop and set up my development environment by Monday, so I started doing that today. I was trying to listen to Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere while doing so, but I find it incredibly hard to multi-task while this is on. This song makes me want to give up programming, take up the guitar, and release a record that’s just a one hour long guitar solo.

Beck is one of my favourite musicians. He just continually blows me away. This is ‘E-Pro’ from his Guero album that was released a few years ago. I’d never seen the video before, and I love it. The ending is the best bit.

I came across this band last month when I was searching for great instrumental pieces to listen to while writing in NaNoWriMo. They’re a Texan post-rock band, and their albums are completely instrumental. The songs are very atmospheric, so they lend themselves well to writing, but they’re also great to just sit back to and relax.

This song, ‘Your Hand in Mine’, is from their 2003 album The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place.

I just finished the first season of Flight of the Conchords, and I loved every episode of it.

I became mildly obsessed with them at the beginning of the year after watching everything I could find on YouTube, so I was really excited when I heard they were coming out with an HBO series. I watched the first episode from the HBO website, thought it was really good, but got distracted and completely forgot about it until a week ago.

They’re a hilarious deadpan musical comedy duo from New Zealand. The series follows their characters as they try to make it in America. Here’s a clip from one of the episodes:

I actually figured the series would be canceled mid-season, since that seems to be the trend with great, unusual shows, but I read they’ve been picked up for a second season. If it’s half as good as the first, it’ll be worth watching.

Here’s a clip of them on Letterman:

I’m listening to M. Ward’s Transfiguration of Vincent right now. He’s an American singer-songwriter, and I’m really enjoying the entire CD. It’s hard to describe his sound, but it’s kind of laid-back and bluesy most of the time. It sounds like a dusty, relaxing afternoon in the middle of summer. He reminds me of Tom Waits, in a way.

It’s impossible to pick one song that truly exemplifies the whole album. I’m tempted to post half the CD here, but I’ll hold off. I’ve uploaded ‘Poor Boy, Minor Key’. It’s really not the best example of his music, but it’s my personal favourite at the moment. The song opens with a a nice piano melody, and then a minute and a half in it shifts into electric guitar and cool lyrics. I’d recommend popping over to Amazon and listening to the samples there. Particularly ‘Sad, Sad Song’, ‘Vincent O’Brien’, ‘Helicopter’, ‘Fool Says’, and his wicked acoustic cover of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’. Oh hell, go listen to the whole thing.