Yeti: "Never Lose Your Sense of Wondor"

I ran across Yeti because the band is on the Oasis On The Road – World Tour 2005 CD. "Never Lose Your Sense of Wondor" is a throwback to decades-ago Los Angeles, when B. Mitchell Reid would spin psychedelic and progressive rock on stations like KMET and KPPC. It has a catchy, innocent pop character that polishes a song plucked off a country-and-roots tree. I close my eyes and see Squeeze toying with Sweetheart of the Rodeo-era Byrds.

Deathray: "Sometimes"

Is there a more name-dropped band this decade that My Bloody Valentine? For all the references very few of the bands actually possess MBV's studio precision or knack for hazy layers of distortion that flow slowly like magma. Deathray's "Sometimes," recorded for a split 7" on Track Star Recors released in 2002, sounds like MBV because it's a cover of its song. Normally the band sounds nothing like MBV. Actually, this song doesn't really sound like MBV, but Deathray did a nice job with the cover.

Lomov: "Onyx"

With the rise and fall of electroclash and the emergence of schaffel, good old fashioned minimal clicks-and-cuts electronic music seems to have got lost in the...schaffel. Ahem. Coolfer found the Stadtgruen website through a Skitkatapult email. All of the label's albums are available as free downloads (visitors can donate to an artist via PayPal) and they're split evenly between minimal ambient and Detroit-era techno. This song, "Onyx" by Lomov, is of the ambient persuasion.