MP3 of the Day: San Francisco Water Cooler

How bands come up with names these days is beyond me. San Francisco Water Cooler sounds like a buncha words you'd string together stoned and instantly forget after, but somehow this trio has stuck with the silly moniker. That being said, SFWC has worked its way into the playlists of heavies like Julian Cope and Thurston Moore, both of whom have heaped praise on the new project from a couple of the Residual Echoes dudes. The songs on the band's MySpace page are made to screw with your listening sanity, with a good two or three things happening inside each one (not to mention vocal harmonies that seem to be sliding off the edge of this psychedelic cliff). But there's some real gold in these new nuggets. Put an ear to the instrumental "pssstAugust Receipt" or the mucho-distorted braincation song "Mental Escape" (listen here) for clues of how out there these talented guys get. -- Jennifer Maerz