Earlier this week, my favorite non-TIG music website, Idolator, completed their favorite songs list called the Top 40 List of Awesomeness with each editor revealing their favorite song of the year. Many of the songs and artists were pretty well known (LCD Soundsystem, Lil Mama, Spoon, Carrie Underwood, etc…), one choice that seemed to come out of left field was "When I Say 'Can You Dig It?' (You Say 'Yeah I Can')" by Chapel Hill, NC's trippy, bubblegummy pop band Violet Vector and the Lovely Lovelies. It shared the #1 spot with Grinderman's "No Pussy Blues."

I remember being intrigued by the band the first time Idolator showed them some love, but they hadn't put out a CD at that point (and officially they still haven't) but now their MySpace promises a 5-song EP in March. They sounded like they would feel right at home on Rhino's essential girl-group box set, One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found. "Can You Dig It" has a backbeat that brings to mind "Be My Baby" (on most days it's my number one song of all time), plus multi-part harmonies and psychadelic (and sometimes surf-y) guitar and organ parts and the call-and-response chorus reminds me of Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss answering Corin Tucker's rhetorical questions when Sleater-Kinney is at its best. It's a swoon-worthy recipe executed brilliantly.

I just found the mp3 to "Can You Dig It?" via the wonders of Hype Machine and haven't stopped listening to it after about an hour.

Here's a video of the band playing "Can You Dig It?" in what looks to be a library. The sound and video leaves something to be desired, but you can get a sense of the spirit in the video here (and you can still hear the studio version of song on MySpace):