We've been listening to this album for weeks now and it really mellows us out. Greenwood did a fantastic job curating this compilation.

It's no Radiohead, but it's all you're gettting until they sign some amazing licensing deal with a label.

Stream the album at mtvU.com. (this link is Mac friendly!)

Here's a little trivia for you: who won the VMA for Best New Artist in 1989? That's right, Michael Penn!

We seem to remember spending a lot of 1989 waiting for this video to air on MTV and daydreaming that a boy would tell us he was Romeo in black jeans.

As you know, little Michael Penn grew up, married Aimee Mann and became BFF with Paul Thomas Anderson. It would seem Mr. Penn has fallen in and out of love with music the 18 years since "No Myth" was a breakout hit, but we can't ever get over our romance with his bizarre first video.

On May 22nd, Sub Pop will release an album from the Handsome Furs, which is Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and his fiancée Alexei Perry.

We suspect all these side projects are part a larger plot by Wolf Parade to distract us from noticing the delay in the release of their next album. Or, at least that's what we thought until a Sub Pop insider tipped us off to the song posted on the Handsome Furs mostly empty MySpace page. It's got Dan's familiar vocal stylings, that nice electro-keyboard heavy sound and is almost able to fill the void in our heart where Wolf Parade's last album lived.

Handsome Furs on MySpace.

We already knew she was obsessed with Nas, but we didn't know she'd pick four of his videos in her favorites list! Give it a look — in addition to Nas she shouted out the Clash, Babyshambles and … Luadcris?

It turns out that French-Canadians are totally where it's at. Since the beginning of 2007, when we started reading all these fantastic reviews for Malajube's CD, we've been addicted to their French Canadian pop stylings. Catch a listen to some of their songs over at their MySpace or make sure to see them at Noise Pop later this week, if you're lucky enough to be attending.

Plus they're super adorable and we could not be more crushed out on them (yes, we are going to single-handedly bring back the Sassy magazine Cute Band of the Month alert).

However, we have a dilemma! Malajube's excellent publicist has given us not one but two videos to choose from. You tell us: which one should we air in the 3/11 episode of Subterranean?

Fille á Plumes

VS.

Montréal -40°C

Our continuing series on bands to catch at SXSW 07, um, continues.

South Carolina-based group The Explorers Club sound like the Beach Boys. We found about twenty music blogs that told us so, one of which was Pitchfork, and everyone knows you cannot disagree with Pitchfork! Luckily Pet Sounds is one of our top ten albums of all time so we're way into it.

We're also hearing a lot of influence in their jams from the Byrds. And the Zombies. At any rate, there's a whole mish-mash of ‘60s pop sounds to explore in their lovely, almost irresistible songs.

The guys play Buffalo Billiards at 8PM on Friday March 16^th.

You can also see them on tour with the Apples in Stereo this spring.

The Explorers Club official website.

Maybe you caught it on MTV2 or mtvU yesterday, but if not please give a look to the awesome new Modest Mouse video for "Dashboard".

Due to some confusion, this week's episode of Subterranean from the PLUG Awards aired without the guest segments.

We got this insane video from someone named Juiceboxxx recently that we just have to show you. He's a DJ/rapper from Milwaukee, WI and we are completely captivated by his "Thunder Jam III".

We spoke to the video director, Lew Baldwin, to get some insight into the cool still photo effect he used:

"Me and the DP - Ryan Gaw - had talked about shooting something with a fairly new digital stills camera that can shoot individual pics rapid fire - around 10 frames per second - It actually sounds like a machine gun. And this was a perfect opportunity. Juiceboxxx was in town for a few shows in L.A. -- so we went out one sweltering summer day and went nuts with the digital stills camera in South LA.

"Juice styled himself -- wearing a custom Alf shirt a friend had made for him. He also ended up almost slashing his belly open climbing over a fence. He had a pretty nasty cut, but we kept shooting. It was a very D.I.Y. punk rock kind of day.

"The editing process took quite awhile -- going through thousands of still images, syncing, etc. I then composited him over these old school Mac OS 9 animations that I created, which nicely reflect his raw energy and style. And there it was!"

So, should this video air on an upcoming episode of Subterranean? Comment and let us know.

Way back in January we had the Thermals on Subterranean as guests and one of their segments touched on the use of religious imagery on their album cover.

That segment brought up some interesting discussion on the Subterranean fan site, so we caught up with Hutch to ask him some more questions about it:

SubT: You mentioned [on Subterranean] having an almost entirely positive fan reaction to the imagery in their album art. Have you found that it's spurred a new type of discourse between yourselves and your fans or even a Christian community you might not have previously been tapped into?

Hutch: As more and more people hear this record, the reactions are becoming more varied, and lately we've received a few negative/confused responses to The Body, The Blood, The Machine. I think Christians who have been angered by this record haven't really explored it enough, and I appreciate Subterranean giving me the opportunity to try and explain myself, again.

More, after the jump...

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