Wolves in the Throne Room, "Permanent Changes in Consciousness"
This is what counts for an interstitial track for Wolves in the Throne Room. Only 1:54!
Gino Parks, "Don't Say Bye Bye"
Meanwhile, Gino Parks cranks out an entire song with an actual structure in a tidy 1:51. It's actually kind of funny to think about how far music has gone from 1960, and to think that you can actually draw a lineage between these two songs without much backtracking on the family tree.
Out Hud, "Dad, There's a Little Phrase Called Too Much Information"
Kinda disco, kinda indie rock at times, the occasional nod to post-punk, Out Hud is an instrumental group that really plays around in the same space as LCD Soundsystem, without maybe quite as many of the arch winks as that band. It doesn't exactly pre-date them, as "Losing My Edge" had already come out as a single, but it did beat the first LCD Soundsystem album by a fair bit, so let's call it contemporaneous. I'd say it's worth a listen if you're a big fan of that band.
Death Cab for Cutie, "President of What?"
I'm on record as thinking Transatlanticism is great and the rest of their stuff is only OK. This is not from Transatlanticism. Draw your own conclusion! (Actually, this is pretty good.)
Radiohead, "No Surprises"
It definitely feels like a waste of time to write a whole lot about Radiohead. Everybody reading this has formed their own opinion, and Radiohead have to be far up there in terms of bands with the most words written about them. So I'll just mention here that OK Computer remains my favorite Radiohead album, as much as that's a boring choice. I'm a boring dude!