By Ryan Broderick

So, when you’re watching TV, do you ever notice how gosh darn hip the music accompanying commercials are lately? You flip through the channels and boom, you’re bombarded by with artists like MGMT, Shwayze, Girl Talk, Sigur Ros, Feist, Silversun Pickups, Arcade Fire, Of Montreal. It’s downright disorienting. An E-surance commercial that came on recently featured a bluegrass band with a link to their Myspace at the bottom of the screen. So what’s the deal? When did Target commercials become Williamsburg?

Personally, I blame iTunes for this new trendy plight. Every since iPod commercials started showcasing unknown indie rock bands and launching them into stardom, every other company has hopped on the boat.

Here’s the reason: Its hip. It grabs attention. And if you scour Myspace for an indie-pop band with just enough friends to have a cult following, and not enough to break through to mainstream audiences, you just found yourselves a mighty cheap source of soundtrack. What is so funny about it, though, is the irony. Everyone knows the old stereotype of a hipster wearing discarded, thrift store clothes. Well, now, advertisers are shifting through unwanted garbage, using it for cheap, and making it cool. Hey, hipsters, remember hair metal? Well, expect a Vampire Weekend cover of “She’s My Cherry Pie.”

But because I love money, I’ve decided to hop on the boat myself and start an indie band. I’ll call it “The Billboards” or “The Whores.” We write indie-pop jingles that vaguely reference products I plan to endorse. We’d be a five piece consisting of a drummer playing a toy drum set, an accordion player, a trumpet player, and a slide guitar player. We’d have lyrics like “You don’t need to buy my affection, but you can buy me half price JNCO jeans at Kohl’s.”

I’d even like to suggest some minor lyric changes to more famous artists just to make things a bit more professional. Feist could change the lyrics of her hit song “1, 2, 3, 4” to “One Two Three Four / Tell me that you love me more / Sleepless long nights / That’s what Ambien’s for.” Or she could do a tampon commercial, “One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, or ten / Tampax tampon, it’s not that hard to put them in.” I don’t know about you, but the idea of a future where the four dudes from Animal Collective scream inaudible nonsense and bang drums while a nice family sits down for a wonderful meal at Boston Market warms my soul.

I suppose it’s bound to happen to every musical trend, but what makes indie pop’s commercial success so painfully funny is the importance of “buzz” bands and their obscurity. The idea that your favorite little band you discovered in some dive bar in the Bronx has skipped MTV and gone straight to hawking wears seems even more sad than a band like Panic At The Disco or Green Day. Its either sad or the smartest money scheme in underground music history.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve got a crazy powerful “Electric Feel” from using all these wonderful GM products. Know some “Young Folks?” Get them a Hannah Montana shirt at Wal-Mart. Is your house invested with some not so “Modest” mice? Buy Raidex today. That’s enough puns for one week.

Ryan Broderick’s “What The F**k” column tackles all the things about pop culture that make you ask “What the f**k?”