Music: Tess Don't Tell

It took me a while to realize that "pop music" isn't much of a genre. There are a 1,001 different varieties of pop; while it is sometimes counterproductive to pigeonhole bands into one box or another, it makes sense as a way of getting a handle on things. The song I'm talking about today is "Tess Don't Tell." It's firmly within the "Dream Pop" subgenre, and it comes from the pop band Ivy.

The anchor of the group has always been Dominique Durand's soft, Parisian voice, but the influence of Andy Chase and Adam Schlesinger are obvious from the rhythmic pop bridges and catchy melodies. "Tess Don't Tell" comes from Ivy's most recent album, "In the Clear," a treasure-trove of songs destined to find their way into sappy TV drama montages ("Grey's Anatomy" is probably using an Ivy song as I write this).

This is the kind of music to turn on when the day is over and you're ruminating about things that were and might have been. I'm not sure if it's important pop, or even good pop, but it's definitely catchy pop.

Tess Don't Tell (Live) by Ivy


If you don't have RealPlayer installed on your computer, take a gander instead at the trippy music video for another song off the same album, "Thinking About You."