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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As I was browsing ChrisB's list of releases today, I saw that The Decemberists' new album was out today. The band drew me into their fold with their last release, The Crane Wife, so I was curious to see how the two albums compared.

There are two streams of the album that I can find, on Entertainment Weekly (must sign up to listen) and on their Myspace (no login necessary).

What do you think of the band's latest material?

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Listening parties and NPR and new shows, oh my!

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What makes Britney’s Blackout album and, her British equivalent, Lily Allen’s It’s Not Me, It’s You albums so compelling is that they are pop stars cognizant of the bubble they live in and written from that perspective.

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It's Not Me, It's You is going to be released next Tuesday - and, as a reminder, Easy Street Records is open until midnight on Mondays.

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Lily Allen's second record, It's Not You, It's Me, is scheduled for release on February 10, 2009 on Capitol Records.

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I have the feeling this song might become a guilty pleasure on many snob's iPod rotation in the following months...

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With all the talk that Juno has inspired on the topic of film soundtracks overshadowing the film itself, it's refreshing to come across Norwegian pop songwriter Sondre Lerche's collection of tracks for 2007's Dan In Real Life.

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It's not every day I get an email from Ben Lashes, frontman for Seattle pop band the Lashes, and I've certainly never gotten one with such a compelling title before.

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There's a lot of stuff going on in the Decemberist camp these days. They've committed to bringing us a new EP, The Perfect Crime #2 EP (scheduled for release on September 25th) and a US tour featuring multiple-night stands (with a different program each night).

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