Daily Download: "Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood," Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

A few months ago a notably hip and masterfully trend-predicting friend raved to me about a Brooklyn band I'd never heard of, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. If I'd paid attention then, I could have written about them and pretended to be a hip master of trend prediction myself. That opportunity is gone. Two or three weeks ago the hype about this band began appearing on music blogs around the Web, and it has been spreading with astonishing speed ever since. To judge from the kind of love these five guys are getting from everyone who has written about them, they're poised to be the come-out-of-nowhere hype baby of 2005 (son of Arcade Fire). While the three songs on their Web site don't make me clap my hands, or say yeah, per se, their sound is focused and fresh and fully formed and a good deal better than you could reasonably expect any Johnny-come-lately unsigned band to be. Singer Alec Ounsworth's voice is confident and debauched and filled with attitude, and he does wonders in stretching the phrase "Upon this tidal wave of young blood" into a great chorus. Also available for free download, "In This Home on Ice" and "Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)," (which is lovely, but not, needless to say, as good as Nelly and Tim McGraw's "Over and Over").