It's been a pretty glum week here at the hecklerspray, what with us only now learning that Princess Di apparently suffered an untimely death. Did you guys know about this? And that's not the worst thing we learned – something called WWI is apparently imminent, and our father is wanted for tea-bagging a dead plesiosaur. 

When it rains it pours.Perhaps glum is an understatement. With that background, you'll understand the sullen nature of this week's recommended downloads. Yeah, they're mostly slow, but they are so good. We've got tracks from The Format, Porcupine Tree, The Notwist, Janove Ottesen, Emiliana Torrini and The Tokens for a little pick-me up.

The Notwist: Pick Up the Phone off Neon Golden
(This is the first of several of our recent discoveries we're recommending to you today. The song's about someone who apparently refuses to tele-communicate, or time travel in either direction for fear of forever altering quasi historical mumbo-jumbo. We think. We really haven't got it all figured out yet. The album, incidentally, has tons of good stuff on it.)

Porcupine Tree: Collapse The Light Into Earth off In Absentia
(These guys fall under the label 'Prog-Rock', apparently. We're not sure what that means, but we think we may want more of it. This one is particularly slow, and it's title is sure to keep light on it's toes. Good thing too, 'cause we were really gonna jack it up. Consider this fair warning, light.)  

The Format: The First Single off Interventions and Lullabies
(This one is actually pretty upbeat, but it's got glum lyrics so we're lumping it in. It's one of the best songs we've heard in an age, assuming coons lives at least a month. Which they do. We know because we were raised by two of them for most of our twenties.)

Janove Ottesen: Go Tell Her off Francis' Lonely Nights
(This guy is brand new to us too, and we think he's super-fantastic. Seriously, out of the 12 tracks on the album, we went and five-starred at least six of them. That average is a good 23 points higher than our scholastic GPA. This song in particular is stimulating. It starts out slow, but when it gets to the chorus of "I better I better/ Go get her/ Go get her", you'll quickly find yourself platonically seduced.)

The Tokens: The Lions Sleep Tonight off Wimoweh: The Best of the Tokens
(Whether you know it or not, you've heard this song – it's got what may very well be the catchiest chorus the western world has ever known. We first came across it in a Japanese karaoke bar while we were on business trying to convince the people there to bring back foot-binding. Apparently, however, their women have grown more fond of 'walking' than of honoring the sacred traditions of their forebears.)

Emiliana Torrini: Wednesday's Child off Love In The Time Of Science
(This fine songstress is an Italian/Icelandic half breed, and feels she's the uncontested property of a man with a fishing pole – according to an album title anyway. On a similar thought pattern, we've never actually belonged to a fisherman, but it did take one 12 hours to cut us out of his net once. There we were clipping along with a dolphin pod when whamo!!! Fun over.)

Now listen to these beautiful choices via the magic of Napster

[story by Shawn Lindseth]