A couple of weeks ago I cross-posted my favorite music list here and got some great tips in the comments. I tracked down a few of the recommended artists and have since given them a good listen. Here are my quick takes. (I'm posting this partly to let the commenters know I took their recommendations to heart and wasn't just blowing smoke when I said I'd listen to them.)

VITALLY IMPORTANT NOTE: The first rule of evaluating music is, it either does it for you or it doesn't. If I don't like something you do, it's not a judgment on your musical taste. It just didn't do it for me.

Artist - song (commenter)

Darker My Love - Two Ways Out (herb the verb)
Good tune. Liked it.

Matthew Dear - Pom Pom (herb the verb)
Another good tune. Herb, if you're reading this - is it a good example of his stuff?

Chica Libre - El Borrachito (apolitiko)
A couple folks recommended this; apolitiko was just the first. I was...underwhelmed. Help me out here people - what do you like about it? What about it gets you so fired up? It might not make me enjoy it but I'd like to know what about it works for you. It just seemed extremely ordinary to me.

Adem - Hotellounge (amberglow)
My favorite of the group. I really liked it and will keep my eye out for new stuff from Adem.

This concludes my blogging for the 2008 calendar year. Thanks to everyone for the recommendations! Now start making note of the grea stuff you hear this year. Around the end of June I'll do a mid year call for rec's and track them down where possible.

P.S. If you'd like what was left on the cutting room floor from my 2008 list - still some fine stuff - shoot me an email and I'll make a zip file available to you somewhere. It'll be ~100 MB though so make sure you have the bandwidth.