Current Faves

 Cool Cool Cool ... Stereolab is so wonderful! Really smooth sounding space age bachelor pad music from England. Lead singer Laeticia is from France so a lot of the lyrics are in french. Their earlier records are very good too, heavily influenced by early stereo tone frequency demonstration records, the Velvet Underground and the early work of Wendy Carlos. They call themselves a "groop".
The Light Will Cease To Fail 414k AU file
Cybele's Reverie 480k WAV file.
 

Yo La Tengo is basically a nice accoustic folk group that plays and writes gorgeous and haunting songs. They also like to turn their amps up really loud and do 20 minute noise-jam freakouts! (They keep a roll of tape on top of their farfisa organ to tape down keys.) Yo La Tengo Rules!
 

Shadows 340k AU file
 

I have been listening to The Spinanes a lot lately since I found out they broke up over a year ago and forgot to tell me. They released two albums on Sub-Pop and they are two of my favorite records of all time. There were really only two people in the band, Rebecca on guitar and vocals and Scott on drums.  They used some piano and bass on a few of the tracks on their last album, but for the most part it is just really sparse but wonderful instrumentation. Scott is now playing for Built to Spill (another great band) and I guess Rebecca has done some solo gigs but I hope she hurries up and puts something out because she is a fantastic songwriter!
Lines and Lines 1399k WAV file
 

Uhhh ... what can you say about Björk. She writes songs about throwing garbage off mountains and does songs accompanied only by a bunch of exhaust pipes banging together. Her new CD is called Homogenic and it is probably one of the best by put out by anybody this year.
Human Behaviour 
 

Robert Pollard is Guided by Voices. GBV has recorded like a million songs - most of them on noisy cassette tape recorders in bedrooms and basements. They will never be household names ... but I love them anyway. I think a lot of their stuff is better than The Beatles (to whom they are constantly compared and judged against). Just my little opinion though ...