Music: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

These cats earned the highest form of critical praise during my recent vacation.
I'm not talking about a glowing review from a scenester music site, oh no.

Something much rarer, unencumbered by decades of accumulated jaded hipness...the enthusiastic endorsement of my two year old niece.

I'd put one of their songs (The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth)on a mix CD I played while cooking, causing her to rock out and make vocal demands for more.

I think they're a "love 'em or hate 'em" proposition given the, uh, rather unique vocal stylings of their lead singer (he puts me in mind of early Violent Femmes), but I dig em, as does the wife and now the niece.

I don't have speakers at work, but it looks like you can sample the tracks here. There are a couple of early tunes that sound like Tom Waits banging on trashcans in a graveyard, but the bulk of them are sprightly, rocking numbers that instill a nearly immediate sense of wellbeing and wholeness.

Give Yellow Country Teeth a spin and see what you think.

/edit
Ok, got home and LO! the link provided above does indeed provide audio justice, and of much higher quality than the usual crappy 'Real' Audio stream.
I'm rocking to 'Teeth' as we speak...cranking the volume to drown out the "woooo! WOOOOOOO!" college party going on next door.

Get off your asses and listen, you heathen swine!
You have nothing to lose but your middle-aged squareness.