After a strangely barren several months musically - not to say there hasn't been any good music this year, just that very little I've heard so far has really hooked me (outside of the new Dan Auerbach produced Dr. John album, Locked Down) in a way that said "this is something different, special, and wonderful" - this pops up and makes me want to give someone my money.

The Bombay Royale have put out a concept album, and the concept is the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist. I know, it's been done before with respectable success (Rome and Year Zero are a couple of examples), but this... wow.

The album's Bondian title, You Me Bullets Love, gives a clue to the tone of the soundtrack for a 1970s Bollywood spy movie that I really want to watch now.

You can download the album's title track from the Bombay Royale website for free (with a bit of convoluted site navigation and giving them your e-mail address).

That one's catchy enough, and the rest of it is quite entertaining, but what really got me - I mean really got me - is their version of "Jaan Pehechan Ho" (originally produced for the 1965 movie Gumnaam).

Wonderful.

Give the rest of it a listen.

You can download You Me Bullets Love from Amazon.

What's you favorite album of the year so far?

From the upcoming Tom Jones album Spirit In The Room.

This may be the greatest song ever recorded (at least for today).

It's called "off Road" - you can find it and mildly odder tracks on United Future Organization's self titled 1994 album at a significantly more listenable sample rate.

It took an oboe trio to do it, but I finally get Radiohead. Threed's version of "Paranoid Android" is full of wonderful old-timiness.

Check it out:

You can find it (and a couple of other covers) on their album Unraveled.

Perhaps the folks over at Radiohead should incorporate more woodwind in future recordings.

Hidden(?) track on Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Que