I have a new love.

My new favorite time-passer-by/waster at work is Last.fm. In an effort to continue expanding my musical horizons (I finally tired of listening to my Shins, Arcade Fire, and Justin Timberlake CDs on loop), I set up a "dashboard" at Last.fm this week and downloaded their music-player-application-apparatus thing.

Upon signing up, the site instructs you to listen to music for about a week and then it will start streaming a station based on your preferences (I know that this thing called "Pandora" exists, but I have banned it due to my mental affiliation with Pandora and the band "Deep Forest." Thank you, Mike.) And although I have never tried Pandora, I am going to ignorantly assert, anyway, that this site is better. Case in point? I use it. That makes it better.

So, anyway. When you get to your page the first time, it asks you to type in an artist you like. I typed "Spoon" (since I was already in that mood having listened to "Ga ga ga ga ga" for the 200th time since it came out 2 months ago). Now the page says that I am listening to "Station: Spoon's Similar Artists." Cool.

The only issue I have encountered? About every 7th song or so is a Spoon song. Not that I mind. But Spoon isn't similar to Spoon. Spoon is Spoon. This is absolutely a recurring issue, as the "Station: Rilo Kiley Similar Artists" and "Station: Ryan Adams Similar Artists" each played several songs by Rilo Kiley/Jenny Lewis and Ryan Adams, respectively.

However, I WILL say that almost every suggested artist has been dead on, about 25% of which I already have in my CD library somewhere because Last.fm is predicting that I will like music that I already know I like. So basically, I have found a radio station that plays a song/artist I already know I like about 25% of the time and plays new shit I end up liking the rest of the time.

In addition, every time a new song comes on, a bio with band trivia appears. This is particularly helpful to me because when hispters eventually take over the world in about 10-15 years (inevitable from my perspective), I'll probably have a shot at winning "The World Series of Pop Culture: Indie Rock Edition." I put the grand prize somewhere around $1 million + a lifetime subscription to Paper Magazine.

Here are some of my new favorite songs I've discovered on Last.fm:

Cat Power: "The Greatest" (I heard this song for the first time on Monday. iTunes says I have played it 11 times since then. You know, if anyone ever gets a hold of my iTunes play count list, I will be so embarrassed. DO NOT JUDGE ME BY HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE LISTENED TO SALT N' PEPPA'S "PUSH IT"! Is there any way to clear that history?)

Cold War Kids- "We Used to Vacation"

TV on the Radio- "Staring at the Sun" (incidentally, a friend of mine also predicted I would like this band and burned me their album "Return to Cookie Mountain" a couple of weeks ago. "Staring at the Sun" is from a different album though. And they're both right! Love them! This is one of my new favorite bands!)

Sparklehorse- "Shade & Honey"

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists- "I'm a Ghost"

Other songs I suggest you listen to, and that Last.fm would probably suggest to me, if I didn't already pre-empt it's awesomeness:

Spoon- "You got Yr. Cherry Bomb" (Obviously, I am a little obsessed with them at the moment. Spoon is to the latter part of 2007 what the Shins were to the former. Mainly due to their June/January 2007 new album release dates, respectively)

Ben Harper- "In the Colors" (New single. Probably has played 11 times in the past two days as well because it's on my playlist right after that Cat Power song I've taken such a liking to).

Okkervil River- "Unless it Kicks" (This album is getting great reviews. It came out yesterday, but I haven't gotten my hands on it yet. Can't wait to hear the whole thing. There's a link to "Unless it Kicks" here and a discussion of and link to another song on the album here.)

PS- This is by far the best blog series I have EVER read. Ever: "Who's worse?"