You may have missed: "Starfucker".

MP3: Starfucker - Isabella Of Castile

NOTE: As the year winds down and we look back at the records we've come into, it's a good time to figure out what may have been missed. This week I will take you there, and over the weekend there will be 2 bonus posts of albums you probably didn't miss, but I'll talk about why I think they rule and maybe open a dialog. Fuck yeah!

Okay, so this record just came out a couple of weeks back so if you missed it, it might be because you haven't heard of it or haven't had a chance to make it to the shop yet. No biggie. But I would like to make sure Starfucker's self-titled debut is not missed, as it is amazing. Our friend Zach Hangauer knocked it out of the park with his "German Love" post, and the track I've posted is to help cement our claim in Starfucker being the best new band of 2008. They killed it in Lawrence on Monday and this jam sounded beautiful.

"Starfucker" is out now from Badman Recording Co.

"German Love" by Starfucker

MP3: Starfucker - German Love

NOTE: Today's contribution comes from Zach Hangauer, who has been missed around these blogging parts. Hopefully he is enjoying some love at this moment, German or not. Fuck yeah!

If the mid-70's Kraftwerk boys sang a verse without the vocoder and then Weezer, a year before the Blue Album, sang the octave-up response, you'd have the gist of "German Love". That there is anything more going on, any brilliance in the structure or a mixologist's melange of sounds and styles - much less drums on full-blast A/C, much less that Portland art-collage wink wink - is gravy, frosting, whipped fucking cream.

"German Love" is the only Starfucker song I've heard, so I have no idea if they are one-hit wonders, but the more I think about it, the more I'm certain they know what's up. Even the words, "German Love" spark sparks. The "German" part is famously literal, wracked by philosophical passions but incapable of expressing them casually. And the "Love" part is the most open, earnest, vulnerable passion we feel. So Starfucker channels Kraftwerk to sing "German Love, I will give it to you/ give it to you/ give it to you" like hungry robots, as though repeating the desire will fulfill it. And then they bop their mop-tops and froth their Weezer falsettos into "But she won't have a thing to do with me/ to do/ to do with me", full of teenage - twenty-something - universal longing, howling wolves by way of a boy's choir. Need a cherry on top? Having set the stage, Starfucker throws the two themes together, the Capulets and the Montagues, desire and defeat, all intermingled like it ain't no thing, like indie-rock pulls off drama like this all the time, so effortlessly, so puzzle- solving-perfect.

So what is this? Synth-pop? Indie-rock? Ganking tween from the tweens for a stoned and boozy Art School party? Acoustic guitarelectronica? There aren't more compressed drums mixed with more diffuse cymbals anywhere on MySpace Music - they've totally flipped it. 10 years of digital Portastudios and we're finally making sense of the way it sounds. I'm wondering if this is the palette for the rest of the record too? D.I.Y. pumped through the digital makeover machine except now there's bands that are too fucking savvy to let it neutralize them.

"German Love" sounds like a glass ceiling busting, like the romance between digital and analog is finally getting past the sniffing-butt stage. It's "Power to the People" seized by people ready to wield it. And they're three kids from Portland! And they're packing maracas!

"Starfucker" is released September 23rd from Badman Recording Co.