Post Rock

 

The Flaming Lips post rock???

 

 

I would personally start off with some Godspeed, Sigur Ros, EITS, Red Sparowes, or Mogwai.

 

Pandora.com and free napster.com usually have many of these bands because most of them are actually very famous. Napster in particular is good becuause you can often listen to full albums multiple times for free. For Pandora, put in a band, and then once the song finishes delete the station and start another one on the same group. Soon enough you will run into repeats, but in the meantime you get to hear lots of free music that usually is fairly representative of their sound. You do have to be careful, however. For example, Pandora will often play a song from How Strange, Innocence, for EITS, when in fact that album is their debut EP and so is not quite like The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place. Or they will do something from Yangui UXO, when the other godspeed albums (particularly f#a#(infinity)) are not as guitar-dominated. But on the flip side, I once got Providence, which is not a half hour of free music. BTW, if you do listen to it in some form, there's four minutes of silence near the end; your internet/CD player hasn't crapped out. :)

 

And the more obscure groups usually have sample songs on their website or MySpace. One thing I most regret is that I didn't actually hear enough before I made some of my purchases. It's all well and good to read about how much other people like it, but they can be coming from completely different musical perspectives, as I found out.