In The Basement : Beaten Awake The era of driver caps, men’s cardigans, waist-hugging wool coats, and David Cross / Jemaine Clement glasses will be retro and cool all too soon. Some band’s second coming will be more warmly welcomed than others. When the time comes, one of the bands we’ll want to offer up’ll be Beaten Awake. They pull together some of the better features from alternative music’s heyday. Not too much in the vein of The Decemberists nor too much like Neutral Milk Hotel, they capture the pervasive influence Pavement and David Berman had on bands at the time. They cover the bases for Conor Oberst, I Heart Hiroshima, P.S. Eliot, and Broken Social Scene without actually having to be any of the bands. Sure, we keep a strict rule that any friend of The Black Keys is a friend of ours. But we also truly think their music video for "Thunder$troke" is a future art student’s wet nostalgia fever dream, and if you ask us what the means in the comments, we’ll just direct you to YouTube. Listen to the playlist, link in bio.