I sent a text to one of my trusted music sources last night with a plea to get me out of my current musical rut. It's something of a miracle, but 4+ months after downloading Swoon by Silversun Pickups, it's STILL in very heavy rotation on my iPod and at home. If you haven't heard it, get it now.

I think it's been at least a month since I downloaded something new and, although I've been avidly listening to music on MySpace, I needed a major fix, which is exactly what I got. The fix?? Passion Pit.

I've seen the name around as an opening act for Phoenix. Every time I heard Passion Pit though, I thought "Wasn't that the cheesey diner in 90210?" Wrong! Thankfully, we have friends who make us do things that are good for us because these Cambridge boys make sick music.

What is this? Another lost LP from Brian Wilson's sandbox phase? If only things were that simple. What we're really alluding to here is Passion Pit's first proper full-length, Manners, a bird-flipping break from the blogosphere by a 21 year old with much more on his manic mind than girls, girls, girls. You know, important matters, like the end of the world and learning to love someone other than the man in the mirror.

That's the thing people missed about Passion Pit's debut EP, Chunk of Change. While it was originally meant as a Valentine's Day gift for a girlfriend who "put up with" frontman Michael Angelakos, that detail's only half of a story that isn't so cuddly when you consider the circumstances.

You see, Angelakos has written songs since he was a piano-pounding 5 year old, from spooky and spare folk tunes to pit-stirring ska punk. But one day, he just stopped. Not by choice. Angelakos' creative well was simply in need of a severe refill, so he started toying with the plug-ins and infinite possibilities of a computer program. Six tracks later, Chunk of Change was born by default.

Read the band's full bio here. Make sure to check out the rest of their site, where you'll find pics, tour dates (they're playing with Phoenix at Summer Stage on 09.26.09), MP3's, and more.

Of course, check out their MySpace, where you can test drive songs. Make sure to listen to The Reeling and Sleepyhead. SICK! Just when I thought I'd nailed Passion Pit's sound from Chunk of Change, they come up with these new tracks from Manners, which sounds more Phoenix than Animal Collective. It's so pop. It's so hot. So hot that I actually bought it from iTunes. Chew on that!