Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey

A cool and funny song, a great AMV (Anime Music Video). Too bad I'll probably never get to see the anime, though... :(

Listen to Code Monkey on YouTube

Read more about Jonathan Coulton on Wikipedia.

Andrea Echeverri - A eme o

Aterciopelados are one of my favourite Latin rock/pop bands, and Andrea Echeverri is obviously one of the main reasons. Her voice is playful and strong, and A eme o is a good example.

This song, taken off her "solo" album, is a love letter to her unborn child (she was pregnant when she composed most of the songs), an album of lullabies and happy rhythms, so different from her work with Aterciopelados and yet so familar.

Grab a pillow, hug it, and rock yourself to sleep...

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Unretrofied

The Mastodon post led me to their label, Relapse Records, and to the discovery of another cool band - The Dillinger Escape Plan. I'm not really an extremist, but I'm open to all kinds of music, as long as it got rhythm and reason; TDEP are labelled as metalcore, a fusion of heavy metal and hardcore punk (in other words, they're a niche within two other niches...)

Still, Unretrofied is quite different - it has electro influences and a psychedelic tone. That's perhaps why it's my favourite TDEP song - it's closer to my own "mix'em and match'em" approach to music.

Watch the video on the label's official YouTube channel.

Another cool (and a lot more punk) TDEP song is Milk Lizard.

Mastodon - Blood and Thunder

I finally put my emusic.com subscription to sleep for a while, after downloading about 500 or so songs. One of the best heavy metal bands I would probably never have listened to, if it weren't for the enthusiastic reviews on emusic, is Mastodon.

Leviathan, the album today's song is taken from, is a cool take on Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Some might find it too calculated; I say it's perhaps the best example of "concept metal", in other words - metal rock for thinkers :)

Watch the zany Blood and Thunder video on YouTube.

Listen to more Mastodon on MySpace.

Katy Perry - Hot 'n Cold

Everybody knows Katy Perry, whose infamous I kissed a girl was on heavy radio rotation all summer (if you don't know her, hide yourself in shame and then read the article on Wikipedia). How the *** did I manage to miss Hot 'n Cold is beyond me; it must be the all-time most popular song on my blog, with no less than 44 million viewings.

Enough already, watch the funny video on YouTube.

Or, if you feel brave, watch the "elderly remix" parody of Perry's breakthrough single here.

Polarkreis 18 - Allein Allein

I saw this one on VH1, so Polarkreis 18, a German pop band from Dresden, are probably already famous. Still, Allein Allein is damn addictive, even if I have absolutely no idea what they say. Hopefully it's not an ode to garden dwarfs; and even if it was, it's worth listening to.

Watch Allein Allein on YouTube. Try to ignore the lead vocalist's looks, if you can :)

More songs on MySpace.

Giulia - Prinzi aripi

I saw this video on TV during the week-end and, whatever that means, I couldn't get the song out of my head all morning. So, after checking out my tasks for today, I decided to spend the remaining 10 minutes before the workday officially starts by sharing this obsession with the world :)

Giulia isn't really a pop star - she's too nice and lacks the cheekiness required. Still, she had a few radio hits, the latest being Rain, a duet with some guy from a boys band called Accept... err, no, that's a Romanian gay rights organization. I think the band's name is Akcent.

Cutting to the chase, watch Prinzi aripi on YouTube.