Twee tracks for the nauseatingly hipsterish.

So much of my ‘I’m such a poppist hipster’ posturing is confined to my Twitter thing, since this space is pretty much cannibalized by my ‘Watch me be smart and funny and clever and mordant and thoughtful and sincere, often at the same time, as I talk about obscure literary whatevs’ stunt. Today let me do the whole poppist-hipster thing right here.

Which is the long way to say that I’ve just finished a play list that I’ll maybe send out to friends in a few days.

For this particular mix I wanted something cute and bubbly and twee, maybe Nordic, since a bunch of Swedes and Norwegians are churning out really fun, occasionally silly and dorky, but generally outstanding pop tunes these past two, three years. (One pretty good specimen is ‘Under The Surface’ by Norwegian Marit Larsen, a.k.a. one-half of the duo that used to go by the unfortunate name M2M. I shit you not.) I know, there is something totally trendoid-android about my jumping the whole Scandinavian bandwagon, but damnit, I really like the stuff that I hear.

I didn’t want to make it like a catalog of Norse ear candy—or I might be tempted to include stuff by Aqua—so I ended up doing the whole round-the-world thing again. I put in songs from England and Scotland (Camera Obscura, Arab Strap, Patrick Wolf), Spain (Le Mans and the Pinker Tones), and Brazil (Caetano Veloso, who sings here that song from ‘The Sound Of Music’). The rest are a pretty arbitrary sampling of U.S. bands—with the exception, of course, of Scandinavians Marit Larsen, I’m From Barcelona, and Maia Hirasawa—that the nauseatingly hipsterish maniacally idolatrously revere. (Hurray for overheated adverbs and adjectives.)

It’s up to you to make sense of the stuff that I wrote above. If you’re not up to doing that, look at the track list instead. I’m posting a rar file of the songs next week. Promise, I’m going to really do it.

1. ‘Bit Part,’ Lemonheads.
2. ‘In Pea We Nuts,’ The Pinker Tones.
3. ‘Oxytocin,’ Snowglobe.
4. ‘The Magic Position,’ Patrick Wolf.
5. ‘Again And Again,’ The Bird And The Bee.
6. ‘Don’t Save Me,’ Marit Larsen.
7. ‘I Don’t Want To Get Over You,’ The Magnetic Fields.
8. ‘This Is The Sound,’ Juliana Hatfield Three.
9. ‘Juan,’ Le Mans.
10. ‘Oversleeping,’ I’m From Barcelona.
11. ‘Gothenburg,’ Maia Hirasawa.
12. ‘If Looks Could Kill,’ Camera Obscura.
13. ‘Something Good,’ Caetano Veloso.
14. ‘Who Loves The Sun,’ The Velvet Underground.
15. ‘There Is No Ending,’ Arab Strap.