Way back when, I used to download an inordinate amount of music from the now rather lame MP3.com. The site used to be a little more chaotic and fun in the old days. One of the many bands I tripped onto was an act called Dust Condom who recorded a couple of my favorite songs from the time, “Grandma’s Drunk” and “What the Fuck.” MP3.com suggested that Dust Condom was somehow connected to another act called Mixel Pixel. Years later, when Mixel Pixel started getting covered by online music journals like Pitchfork and the ilk, I often found my self wondering if the two bands were, in fact, linked. I wrote the people at Mixel Pixel the other day and found out that they were and are. Dust Condom, aka Matt Snee, even has a brand new album out, “Weird Town” which you can listen to or download here.

Tracks “Hesitation,” “Ablified” and “Without You,” the last of which features Queen of Quartz, are already new favorites. Other tracks like “A Place I’ll Return to Someday (With Nobuo Uematsu)” make me smile far more than the new Peter Jackson Hobbit trailer. And then there is the title track, “Weird Town,” which feels like falling in love in the 90s only to wake up in a Super Mario-fied haunted castle. The album also features the rocking Mixel Pixel cover “Ten Cent Whiskey” and Amps cover “Bragging Party.”

Snee reports that there should be more Dust Condom in 2012. But if you can’t wait till then, check out the “Sneeadelic Christmas” album by Snee & Friends, which features “Another Christmas without You (Winter is a Bitch),” a track that deserves a stocking on the mantel alongside the Pogue’s “Fairytale Of New York” and other bittersweet Christmas songs.