Are you getting tired of all the music headlines going to new Brooklyn bands? I bet you the players in Los Angeles’ thriving scene are way over it. Why’s everybody always talking about Brooklyn when the West Coast boasts a dream team of new talent, turning out a steady stream of polished, moody rock?

Although the rap game gets L.A. plenty of love, lackadaisical, harmony-laden smog-pop hasn’t had a true moment since The Beach Boys and The Mamas And Papas ruled the late ’60s. But that has been changing, slowly but surely, thanks to the radio dominance of a new class of sun-bleached bands.

Get acquainted with the new L.A. sound in the video playlist below, featuring laid back, perma-tan jams from Jenny Lewis, Earlimart, Silversun Pickups, Pete Yorn, Beck, The Watson Twins, Cold War Kids, The Mars Volta, Incubus, Brett Dennen and many more. It’s mellow. Whatever.

Just a few days ago I went on and on about Silversun Pickups being the second coming of Smashing Pumpkins. How weird to come to the end of Thursday and find original Pumpkins bassist James Iha on my desk, along with Taylor Hanson (Hanson), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains Of Wayne) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Trick). Together they are supergroup Tinted Windows (we warned you!) and, surprisingly enough, they kinda sound like a bubblegummy… you guessed it, Smashing Pumpkins. Or wait… is it Siamese Hanson?

Either way, it’s about to get in your head with a vengeance. The ooh-ahhs in the chorus are sonic barbs — like the ones they put on the ends of fishing hooks — and they’re about to tear your brain to shreds in the sweetest and gentlest way. This may seem like a lazy cop-out, but the honest truth is that this band combines Smashing Pumpkins’ edge with Hanson’s pop sensibility, Fountains Of Wayne’s quirky light-heartedness and Cheap Trick’s ballsy muscle. It’s first grade math. And it sounds amazing. Brace yourself for pop-rock perfection.

You know Siamese Dream? That Smashing Pumpkins record? Well, I don’t wanna date myself too bad here, but as a teenager, that album totally changed my life. Maybe even started my life, in a way. I was probably 13 or 14, sitting in my bedroom — far, far away from my parents downstairs — with hands clamped to my temples, hair pressed up out of whack and eyes bugged out, just absolutely losing it to the vaguely threatening alien atmosphere of that sexy, desperate sound. What in the world, I wondered, could a “Silverf***” be? Well, obviously they went on to make a lot of great music, but honestly, I lost touch with the Pumpkins after Siamese Dream. Always hoped they’d do a follow-up, but it never came.

Silversun Pickups — the shimmeringly smoggy Los Angeles emoters featured this week on “The Leak” — definitely have their own sound. Somehow their latest record, Swoon, manages to be hazy and lazier than Siamese Dream, while still sounding more urgent and aggressive. But there are definitely still major echoes of early Smashing Pumpkins in lead singer Brian Aubert’s reedy, pleading tenor. And there are definitely points where Swoon sounds more Siamese than Mellon Collie ever did. In fact, can we make that an official indie rock adjective? It describes the sound of Swoon — streaming in full on MTV.com’sThe Leak, right now, as promised — better than anything else I can come up with. More than hazy or fuzzy or shimmering or wild, Swoon sounds siamese.

+ Listen to every track of Silversun Pickups’ Swoon. You’ll see.

Check out this super-dramatic, nerdy love poem to Silversun Pickups that one of our editors just submitted to go along with the Leak of their new record, Swoon.

“Silversun Pickups are high on the list of reasons to love Los Angeles. They should run for mayor. Not only are their evil but breezy vocals a telling reflection of immaculately sunny L.A.’s sinister underbelly, but their overall sound is such a perfect sonic approximation of smog, that it makes the city’s low-lying sepia mist look almost lovely. Swoon, their second full-length, was recorded in their private studio. A place they call “The Dark.” And you can hear that dark in every song, waltzing with the California sunshine, striking an elegant balance between violence and beauty. Swoon hits shelves Tuesday, April 14, but you can listen to the whole thing, RIGHT NOW, only on The Leak.”

Man oh man, Swoon is right. What a softie! If I hadn’t previewed the Leak or watched the seizure-inducing (in a good way) video for first Swoon single, “Panic Switch,” and found all this raving to be dead-on, I’d wonder if a member of the band had been hired as an MTV writer. But I listened and I watched and, lo and behold, the vocals ARE evil! The fuzzed-out guitar onslaught actually DOES sound like smog! And you know what else? It really is a violent collision between the pretties and the uglies. And the pretties win.

The “Panic Switch” video was directed by James Frost, the same guy who turned Radiohead’s “House of Cards” into front-page news with his nutso sci-fi laser beam imagination. He does Silversun Pickups equal justice below with multi-colored strobes and wicked editing. Watch the video and keep an eye out for that much touted Swoon leak, popping up on MTV any minute now!

Looking for the perfect pick-me-up? How about doing donuts through downtown L.A. with Silversun Pickups? Yeah, that’ll wake you up … and so will SSPU’s new video “Little Lover’s So Polite,” directed by Joaquin Phoenix.

During an exclusive interview with Buzzworthy, singer Brian Aubert gave us a first-hand account of what went into shooting the seemingly innocent video … apparently the band (and crew) had to hold on for dear life as the pickup truck they were filming on went speeding through the streets. “Joaquin got me all amped up and I started getting into it, so he got even more into it and we started going crazy, zipping down the street and doing all kinds of crazy things,” Brian said. “At one point the camera guy fell out of the truck and Joaquin just grabbed him and was like, ‘Did you get the shot? Did you get the shot?’ It was so exciting.”

Some other tidbits Brian shared about the video? “Joaquin played the song at double speed so it was really, really fast — chipmunk style. That’s why we’re kinda in slow motion. And if cars went by, they went by. There’s a bus that went by with people staring at us. You can see the city whipping by us and smoke [coming up from the tires].”

Hold onto your hats, folks. It’s time to take a ride with Silversun Pickups…

When we got word that Silversun Pickups would be premiering their new video, “Little Lover’s So Polite,” next week, we just had to get singer Brian Aubert on the phone to find out more. And indeed we did. He told us that the bare-bones video, which was directed by Joaquin Phoenix, features the band on the back of a pickup truck speeding through downtown L.A. in the middle of the night. Here’s what he had to say about the video, working with Joaquin and when the band will be releasing a new album.  

Buzzworthy: How did you and Joaquin Phoenix team up?

Brian Aubert: I wish there was an exciting story, but there isn’t. He’s just starting to become a video director and he’s also a fan of music and he swims in pretty independent worlds. So, somehow or another, he heard that there was a video being made.

BW: So he came to you?

BA: Yeah, pretty much … according to me and him. But I’m sure there were some handshakes and stuff going on behind us.

BW: What was it like working with him?

BA: The timing was amazing — we were in between tours and he was in between movies. We really liked the experience ’cause it was so crazy. We were crazy. And he was so mental. [Laughs.] We kinda wanted the video to be a little bit surreal, so he decided there was going to be no effects, no nothing. However it was shot was gonna be how it was. We shot it in downtown L.A., so when it looks like the city is spinning behind us we’re really on the back of some crazy truck that was doing that. It was crazy. Read more…

Please, don’t anyone tell Silversun Pickups that it’s almost 2007. We want the L.A. (Specifically Silver Lake — also home to MTV Artist Of The Week alum Rilo Kiley) foursome to keep making dreamy, fuzzy, unfussy indie pop-rock like it’s gonna be 1993 forever.

Like The Pixies, Breeders, Smashing Pumpkins (pre Zwan, of course) and My Bloody Valentine before them, Silversun Pickups blend boy-girl harmonies, determined guitars and the occasional somber strings into that rarest form of earnest, honest and pure alt-pop – the type that lacks pretentious pomp and unnecessary perk or pep.

Their first full-length album Carnavas staked out impressive footholds on the Billboard Top Independent Albums and Top Heatseekers charts. Not bad for a band that may’ve never existed if founding members Brian Aubert and Nikki Monninger hadn’t randomly met on an airplane. And if we had a car – or fittingly, an old VW van retrofitted with a CD player or just one of those iPod lighter adapters – we’d pop it in and drive up the 101 ’til we ran out of gas, because it’s quite possibly one of the best “driving and thinking” albums since Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia… But right now we’ve got a party to go to, and so do you.

Check out two of Silversun Pickups’ MTV Artist Of The Week on-air sleepover spots, which include puppies, party pranks and poolside performances. And a cookie shrine to Jared Leto. You can see their spots all week on MTV, and you can watch them all here.

Of course, tell us why you love sspu, and remember: don’t fall asleep first.