Top Musical Finds

I’ve been wanting to do this post for quite some time and am glad to finally get it out to my faithful readership — all 7 of you. I love each and every one of you.

It took me all of last year to rate all the songs in my music library. At the beginning of ’06 I had over 20,000 MP3 song files and after the year-long process of rating them, I was able to flush just over 5,000 of them. My current music library has just over 15,000 songs.

Over the last several years I’ve read about and listened to hundreds of new bands. I guess seeking out great new music is like an ongoing easter egg hunt for me. The good news is, if you spend enough time looking … and trudging through a lot of crap and mediocrity … there really are some amazing bands making that glorious art of noise.

Here are my top musical finds — my needles in today’s musical haystack:

Mew
Ben Folds
Jason Falkner
The Donnas
Ok Go
Owsley
Angels and Airwaves
Bleu
Brendan Benson
Willie Wisely
Cherry Twister
The Churchills
The Rosenbergs
Cosmic Rough Riders
Edwin / Edwin & The Pressure
Spiraling
Gwen Mars
Fountains Of Wayne
The Frantics
Guster
Hanson
India Arie
Jellyfish
Joe 90
Kasabian
Kevin Max
Longwave
Mayfield
Prefab Sprout
The Argument
The Ark
Rich Young Ruler
Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
Rooney
The Soundtrack Of Our Lives
Sugarbomb
The Wondermints
The Sugarplastic
Taxiride
The Tories

Let me know if you would like specific album recommendations on any of these bands.