Saturday Open Thread: Random and Interesting, Music Edition

It’s been a while since I last did one of these, but I want to start making it a regular feature. This thread is for you to tell us about something cool and interesting you’ve come across lately, something that makes you happy and that you think more people should know about. This week, I’d like to focus on music. What are you grooving on lately?

I have to admit, I have ulterior motives for this. These past few months, I’ve been spending time on Turntable.fm, which if you haven’t heard of it, is a social networking site for music. Users can join chat rooms where they can play songs from the site’s library, which everyone else in the room can hear and click to rate.

On Fridays, Amanda Marcotte runs a Turntable chat room called Panda Party, where I’ve been spending a fair amount of time. But I feel a little outclassed – a lot of the regulars seemingly have encyclopedic knowledge of the last several decades of music, far more than mine. If I’m going to be good at this, I need to step up my game. I’ve been listening to other online services like Pandora and Last.fm to build up my repertoire, but I’ve found a lot of favorites through recommendations from human beings. So, what are yours?

There’s so much I don’t know about, I’m open to almost any genre; so if you like something, feel free to speak up. However, if you’re interested in my tastes, these are three bands I’ve come across recently that I really like:

The Joy Formidable, “Whirring”:

Metric, “Gold Guns Girls”:

Morningwood, “Best of Me”:

Now, it’s your turn!