by JAY WATTS III

As one who’s been plagued with vast amounts of press releases full of hackneyed phrases and banalities in the past few years (and has in fact written some himself), I’ve come to regard publicists with the same disdain as student-union keeners and people who stand two abreast on the escalators in the metro.

Something, however, that popped into my inbox that was worthy of the meager attention I can pass its way was a press release for indie-cast Web site Daytrotter (www.daytrotter.com). It’s an elegantly designed and functional Web site—which is a blessing in the current climate which favours the pre-formatted MySpace monstrosity vs. overreaching, mega-Flash site—and hey, the content ain’t half bad! Live recordings of skewed-to-the-left bands like Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown keep the quality level above that of the ubiquitous, bubbling live takes of acoustic versions of car-commercial indie-rock anthems that one expects from such projects.

If the indie aesthetic feels a bit too precious, there’s much more NYU genre-slumming to be found at the revered East Village Radio (www.eastvillageradio.com), the on-air meeting place for Fader journos that also welcomes a number of blogosphere and music celebrities, disguised as slick-talkin’ radio hosts. My listening is sporadic, so I don’t know if this radio station, like CKUT, also broadcasts nightly renunciations of Israel, but shows like Tim Sweeney’s Beats in Space (which I mentioned in a previous column), and blog-rat Nick Catchdubs and Mark Ronson’s show (a mix of which you can download at www.catchdubs.com/music/mixes/ or, alternately, shell out some cash for at www.turntablelab.com), are far more invigorating than the usual “listener-supported radio” agit-prop.

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