The Notwist follow a (now) long-standing tradition of tech-pop set forth by genre stalwarts like Mum and Lali Puna. Now, there are many bands who share a common sound of gentle melodies and clickety beats. Check out DNTEL (and the related Postal Service and Figurine), Styrofoam, The Russian Futurists, Psapp, Electric President, Ms. John Soda, and the Junior Boys for similar sounds.

The new Figurine song, 55566688833, is currently in heavy rotation on my iPod. The lyrics are clever (and timely), and the production from Jimmy Tamborello is top-notch (as usual). It is making the rounds on mp3 blogs across the blogiverse as I type this, so it should be easily found. Try searching on http://elbo.ws if you are interested.

I’d like to place additional emphasis on Lali Puna, whom I’ve found to be the yin complement to the male vocals of Marchus Acher of the Notwist. Front-woman Valerie Trebeljahr does at times rock harder than Acher himself, but they teamed up to form Lali Puna in ‘98 and have supplanted many attempts at the tech-pop genre with albums such as “Faking the Books”, “Tridecoder”, and “Scary World Theory”. Jeff points out a number of excellent bands to check out, all of which are worth the time to research. In fact, I’ve got a few to discover myself.. Thanks Jeff.