Back to Business: The Color Wheels

First, sorry for the relatively long silence: vacation, then the beginning of a semester, have left me with precious little free time. But things are in motion now, and I'm falling into something of a pattern. Also, the first season of Flight of the Conchords has ended, so that particular mania can rest for a bit. (Now, if I could sleep through the night, I'd be golden.)

One of the nifty things about having this blog is the sheer number of cool bands who send me emails asking me to check out their stuff. Not that I'm much of an opinion maker: our 200 hits a day make us slightly less influential than the dust bunnies under the bed. Still, what's the point of the internets if it's not to reach out and find the twelve people in the world who like what you like? (And don't say pornography, you nasty boys.)

In any case, I got a nice email from my fellow upstate NYers at Viper Bite Records, and one of their bands in particular really struck me. The Color Wheels seem to have captured that boy-girl vibe of the mid-90's alternative powerpop revival--think Velocity Girl or early New Pornographers--and married it to the kind of catchy, jangly stuff we love around here.

There's precious little info on them around, but they seem to be a two-person operation in the mode of the White Stripes (no idea if they come with all the interesting emotional baggage, however). The guy, Jon Sebastian of Poughkeepsie, seems crazy busy, almost Pollardesque, with two bands (the other is The Mirror Age) and solo work, too. The young woman, Psalm, is more mysterious--even her MySpace profile is secret. But the song "Green Means Go" is catchy as hell, and you can download it from MySpace or from iTunes. You'll thank me later. (And if The Color Wheels would like a proper write-up, they have only to drop me a line.)