Nobody will die while I've got money in my hand.

Wolf Parade - Secret Knives

What if there was a band that sounded like it was fronted by not even the real Harry Caray, but Will Ferrell doing an impression of Harry Caray in that skit on Saturday Night Live when he asked Jeff Goldblume if he'd eat the moon if it was made of barbeque spare ribs? Also, what if the music they were making sounded like plutonium, like ten years from now your children will probably be born with extra weird body parts because you are listening to it now? Well, believe it or not, Wolf Parade's first EP sounded like this. When I was seventeen I put it on a cassette tape and listened to it exclusively in my car for an entire summer. I have not been stricken with radiation sickness yet, but I will certainly pull this song from the blog if I start to show symptoms.

This isn't me, as much as it may seem

The Get Up Kids - Second Place

If the awesomeness of The Get Up Kids could be calculated mathematically and plotted on a coordinate plane (in which the x axis represents chronological time and the y axis represents awesomeness, in incriments of ten), the highest point on the graph would be the part at the end of the first chorus of "Second Place", when the guitars hush for a moment and Matt Pryor unhinges his jaw to let out the line, "THEN YOU'VE GOT BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN ME." Go dig out your copy of the Woodson EP. It is better than you remember.

Buy it from Amazon if you had an incomplete teenage experience and somehow do not own this album.

Lindsay Zoladz is a DJ at WVAU. She promises never to mention math again on this blog. Listen to her show on Tuesdays from 4:00 - 6:00 at wvau.org.