The best thing about writing for L.A. RECORD is having cool friends who do some fucked up, weird shit. I’m talking “no compelling reason, no immediate gain, multiple-hours-of-effort-and-maybe-only-five-people-will-care-or-maybe-5000″ type shit. And I love it.

I also love interviewing huge bands–Public Enemy, Primal Scream, Earl Scruggs–and being the first one to get the hot new album by, say, Best Coast, before it’s even in stores. But I think it’s even more a part of L.A. RECORD’s mission statement to tell readers about the strange ones:  the bedroom recording wizards, the ones with greasepaint on their foreheads, the ones who write liner notes in blood, who make rap songs out of Ned Flanders quotes, whose lyrics are poetic reinterpretations of names for McNuggets, who sing along to karaoke machines, who take the bus from Covina so they can stage-cough by my car in the Pehrspace parking lot, just waiting for the right moment to accost me and whip out the hand-painted CD-Rs that they’ve somehow shoved into the back pockets of their skinny jeans. Once I even told the world about an Asian guy with long hair who made music on drum pads while wearing a giant bunny costume.

And in that spirit, it is with a joyous heart that I share with you a free compilation of new recordings where EVERY band on the list did their version of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Some of these are bands you might know quite well: Stab City, Geoff Geis, Treasure Mammal. And some will be completely new to you. Some may exist only for this collection! They’re from all over the world, and I suspect no contribution was turned away.

Anyway, quit reading this and check it out here.

-D. M. Collins

P.S. This project was curated by Geoff Geis’s roommate, “Kyle.” Thanks, Kyle!