"jimmy down the well" and "sheffield shanty" from monkey swallows the universe. via 3hive. i have never heard a band who wanted to be belle and sebastian more.

"pull shapes" from the pipettes, via my brother. cute video and cute girl singers, too. everyone looks like they're on smiley acid and in the 60s, which is fun! some other fun songs at their myspace page. pretty much all of them are 60s-girl-group-inspired - not exactly orginal, but happy and fun and catchy, and what more do you want?

as for an official album of the summer, after having finally got the whole thing on my ipod, i'm going to have to go with charles on, SURPRISE, phoenix's "it's never been like that." it just does it for me.