So here’s the story: OK Go won my heart at the (old) Crocodile one night when Damian Kulash awkwardly positioned himself center stage with one leg in a full cast, and proceeded to sing the sweet & funny "It’s Tough to Have a Crush When the Boy Doesn’t Feel the Same Way You Do" at the exact moment I knew that I was going to get dumped by the boy I attended the show with.

After that kismet (and rocking out to the rest of their songs), I made it a point to see them whenever they came to Seattle, which fortunately for me is pretty frequent. I am thrilled I got to see them perform their carefully choreographed "A Million Ways" dance live, even more thrilled when they came up with the "Here It Goes Again" treadmill dance—and have been loving each and every video and song they’ve released since.

The last Chop Suey show ended up with me out of breath and on the floor, clutching an orange tambourine and picking confetti out of my hair. All of this is a long-winded way of telling you that if you think all OK Go does is put out cute videos and make teenage girls swoon, you should reconsider, because not only are their live shows some of the BEST I’ve ever seen, their 2002 self-titled release OK Go and 2005’s Oh No will rock the hell out of you (no lie: every single time I play an OK Go song for someone they say; "Who is this? It’s really good!"), and their newest, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, is even better.

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{The Lonely Forest play at the Showbox at the Market on Thursday, December 31 with Minus the Bear and Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground.}

For those from of you who may have missed it, The Lonely Forest are a guitar-based indie rock quartet who’re the best damn thing to come out of Sound Off! in… ever. Centered around lead-man John Van Deusen’s blissfully energetic guitar and earnest vocals, the band has been creating a steady following since their formation in 2005 and are poised to take over the world. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to write about this album either. The first time I tried to write about The Lonely Forest’s We Sing The Body Electric! I was confounded. It was an odd situation, I’m not normally faced with an album that I can’t seem to find anything to say about and I’m an opinionated putz, so what was the big deal? The big deal is that there isn’t much to say about The Lonely Forest’s We Sing the Body Electric! because it’s really, really good. That’s the big secret and the reason this review is giving me something of a headache.

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Uneven albums by your favorite artists are like spending a uneventful, sort of boring evening with your very best friend. You could criticize the night, but you're still really glad she was there anyways, and it's not like you would take those hours back.

In the wake of roots-soulful indie rock band Grant Lee Buffalo, singer/songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips recorded his most recent solo album Little Moon in just four days with a small tribe of veterans, including Jay Bellerose (the drummer from the Allison Krauss/Robert Plant Raising Sand album). Jamie Edwards puts a cozy wash of keyboards and sweet fills between Phillips' coy and wizened vocals and Bellerose's drums, with Sebastian Aymans adding more clickety-clank style percussion as well. Bass player Paul Bryan is hardly there in a good way.

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I joined in the wailing when Mon Frere went down in 2007. Leader Nouela Johnson had such potential, her way-out style and insouciant songs wouldn't just stop there, would they? It seemed very James Marilyn Dean Monroe, a fickle flash-burn of utter musical sweetness gone before the world could be convinced. Then Johnson went on to play keyboards with Say Hi and other bands, and it seemed our frantic farewell may have been rightfully certain.

Now, like your most tender enemy and worst friend calling in the middle of the night, Johnson is back in Seattle, using her sly and swaggering voice to bob and spin over sauntering piano bomp in the self-titled People Eating People. Mark Gajadhar from Past Lives, the Blood Brothers and Champagne Champagne has helped her construct a delightful soundtrack for a dimly seductive grotto at the edge of night. Joined by members of Sirens Sister (Ben Libay) and Black Houses (Christiaan Morris), People Eating People seems like a very healthy project for a band title about cannibalism and a collection of kill-cabaret songs that nakedly studies psychic vampirism and dysfunctional trysts.

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The diaspora of talented songwriters from the collective known as Carissa's Wierd has by now become legendary, with a few albums of post-break-up works from Sera Cahoone (solo) and Mat Brooke (Band of Horses, now Grand Archives) to remind fans of their three very fine, first full-lengths while all together: Ugly but Honest (2000), You Should Be At Home Here (2001), and the absolute classic Songs About Leaving (2002, recorded and mixed by Chris Walla).

Co-leader Jenn Ghetto has kept a lower profile since helping to craft and contributing inspirational vocals and guitar to those dark day dream discs, but her band S is currently touring with Grand Archives, playing the Southwestern states as I write this. For the journey flagship Seattle label Aviation Records did a high quality re-release of her personal 1999 debut sadstyle, which Ghetto is able to sell whilst on tour. This connection occurred, according to Hannah Levin at the Seattle Weekly, when guitarist and keyboardist Joe Arnone from Aviation's band See Me River began helping Ghetto revive S.

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I want to sit you down and talk -- I want to pull back the veil and find out what it is I've done wrong, Glen Hansard croons earnestly. It's the first line from the opening track of the new Swell Season album, Strict Joy. The song "Low Rising" is at once classic Hansard -- heartache, folklore, anguished cries in the middle of a set of casual, life-altering sentences -- and also a gorgeous representation of what old fans will refer to as the 'newer' signature sound of the Swell Season. Hansard's achy, telltale traits are layered in with Marketa Irglova's delicate shared-lead vocals, which vary across the tracks from barely-secondary to her Damien Rice-esque lead on "Fantasy Man." Add in some catchy choruses, two parts major-label caliber production, and a few members of the Frames -- and you've got the perfect follow-up to the Once soundtrack.

Having been a Frames fan for quite a few years now, I was happy to hear the full-band style of the Strict Joy tracks carrying hints of a restrained, filtered-down hint of their tone, as Colm Maclomaire, Joe Doyle, and Rob Bochnik are all contributing members to the Swell Season sound. Which is not to pigeonhole the Swell Season as a side-project of any sort, as it solidly stands on its own legs among Frames and non-Frames albums alike. The dozen tracks wind the listener from the feel-good ache of "Low Rising" to the sad, haunted "The Rain," crossing to the distant, staring-out-the-window-of-the-train movie-scene sound of "Paper Cup." The beginning of the album never stalls out, laying out tracks cohesively one after the other, seamless but not too similar; constantly pretty and yet shot through with knife-in-the-gut writing that begs you to pull the car over and pay attention.

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