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Few things warm the cockles of a garage-rock fan’s heart than discovering a current band that shares the lo-fi ethos of the crappy-sounding 1960s pop bands that recorded their best work on used-too-many-times Ampex reel-to-reel tape, accented with far too much staticky analog fuzz and reverb to comprehend the lyrics.

You know the sound, as if it were filtered through an aluminum garbage can. Or four. Back in the 1960s, it was hard to make a good sounding record on a shoestring budget. Today, it’s hard to make one that sounds like crap, because digital technology’s so good and so cheap. You gotta deliberately make your albums sound absolutely horrible.

That’s exactly what Iowa City’s Thee Mighty Handclaps do, and quite well, actually. Their MySpace has a couple unreleased tracks (perfect!) that pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the band and their outlook. Needless to say, their next record won’t be released on some namby-pamby audiophile label for the benefit of the $20,000-a-pair B&W loudspeakers crowd.

Only on MySpace can this band live…but not for long. They’re so cool, they can’t stay unsigned for too long, can they? Don’t forget, you read about them here first–now go out and up the pathetically low play count on those sample tracks, would you?