Here's the blessing and a curse of being a music writer: Once PR companies and record labels and bands get your e-mail address, you start getting flooded with e-mails about new CDs coming out, tours, cereals that a singer has helped create, etc. So, with an overstuffed inbox, things sometimes get missed until dug out of the digital quagmire.

One such e-mail was from a member of Sun Mar who wanted to let me know about his latest project, Federer. I slapped my head once when I found the message, and then hit myself a second time when I heard the music he was pimping here. Just as Destroyer did with its most recent album Kaputt, this duo has dipped into the world of glossy, hyperstylized '80s pop a la Cupid & Psyche-era Scritti Politti, Michael McDonald, and the like. But where Dan Bejar and company have twisted the sound to meet the band's own ends, Federer wants it to sound as authentic as possible.

I Wanna Do (What You Wanna Do) by This Is Federer 

Push aside the lo-fi recording quality, which comes across as either fuzzy AM radio reception or a cassette tape that has been dubbed a few too many times, and this is as close to the original article as you're going to get. The treacly lyrics, the intense sax solo, the soulful background vocals...one listen and I was transported back to my childhood in the '80s, listening to Chaka Khan and the Jets being broadcast from a Canadian radio station. It stirs up that long dormant sweet spot that I try so hard to suppress through ample doses of experimental rock and electronic music. I can only hope it has something of a similar effect on you.