Arcane Gazebo

I basically know almost nothing about any of these artists, so I feel like I don't have any chance all to get this.

With Lemming's list, I knew some of the artists, so there was some hope of figuring it out.

I suppose I could do pure googling, but without any knowledge base at all, I just feel stuck.

Even with Lemming's list I only had deep knowledge of one of the artists; I knew a few songs from some of the others, but not enough to identify the theme. I basically had to look at tracklists and lists of singles (and use my knowledge of what's in Lemming's collection) looking for commonality. So I assume that's what people are going to have to do here.

I've also made mine somewhat harder than Lemming's, both by choosing less mainstream artists and by construing the theme somewhat less narrowly. On the other hand, many of these bands only have one or two albums out and there's nothing on the order of looking through David Bowie's entire catalog.

It occurs to me that there are two Belle & Sebastian songs that fit the theme; the one I picked is the more widely-known.

hmmmm, this is difficult. Colors? seasons? Honey?

"Seasons", while not quite correct, is on the right track (you are probably looking at some of the right songs).

ehhhh, could be way off. Is the theme "winter" or "cold"?

Math & Phys Club: "Cold as Minnesota"
My Bloody Val.: "Soft as Snow"
Clap: "In this home of Ice"
The Reindeer Section: "Cold Water"(?)
Stars: "What the Snowman learned about love"
The Pipettes: "A winter's sky"
British Sea Power: "Victorian Ice"
Belle & Sebastian: "The fox in the snow"
Pelican: "last day of winter"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "cold light"(?)
Pavement: "summer babe(winter version)"(?)

All correct, nicely done!

The theme was "Cold Winter", inspired by California's recent freeze; I took songs with titles relating to either word in the theme.

Um, wow. I'm guessing that's it. Maybe I shouldn't have read the comments, but either way I'm impressed.

I have all of those bands' Wikipedia pages open in tabs, and have been occasionally scanning back and forth, getting nothing.

The best I had so far was songs with first- and second-person in the titles, which doesn't quite extend to all of the bands (and is also saying almost nothing, given typical music subjects...)

When I made my list, yeah -- I didn't expect anyone to be familiar with the majority of the bands, but I expected everyone would be familiar with at least one or two. I also constrained myself to songs I actively like, and might think of if I was thinking of good songs by said artist (though not necessarily my favorite, of course).

Wow, did it really take me over 8 minutes to post that? I disbelieve.

I am very familiar with several of the artists Lemming used, so I felt I had a chance to make a solid guess even without googling. (It was a wrong guess, so maybe my feelings of having a better chance were illusory?)

For this puzzle, I know zero song titles. I recognize a couple of the names because you've mentioned them before (but not for any other reason). I assume I have heard a few of the songs once or twice via your mix CDs but if you played them to me now, I doubt I would remember having heard them.

It's true I could have treated this as a pure word puzzle with the googling, but it doesn't feel like quite the same type of puzzle.

My iPod is having another hard drive hiccup at the moment. March 17th is the big day.