Downloads

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Picks from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of click-and-drag music choices. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. All are free, except as noted.

-- CHRIS LEE

“Download This Song”

MC Lars

www.mclars.com/v2

Call it the file-sharing counterpart to Abbie Hoffman’s 1970 “Steal This Book.” Self-described “post-punk laptop rapper” and Stanford graduate Lars has some bad news for executives at music conglomerates who remain resistant to what he calls the iGeneration -- people who believe music in the Digital Age has become more service than a product. “Did you know in 10 years record companies won’t exist?” he raps over a guitar sample from Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.” “Goodbye DVDs and compact discs!”

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“Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”

The Flaming Lips

music.yahoo.com/musicvideos

In this impishly hilarious video from Oklahoma’s favorite alterna-rock surrealists, the guy having hamburgers Scotch-taped all over his body looks suspiciously like Karl Rove. Pushed through a doorway to face a trio of fat, hungry men with burger-primed appetites, the suggestion is that he is paying some kind of karmic comeuppance. While the visuals function as goofy fun, they also serve as visual prompt for the song’s fundamental question: “With all your power, what would you do?”

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“Poppin’ My Collar”

Three 6 Mafia

www.iTunes.com

The Memphis rap collective’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” may have snagged the Oscar for best original song. But with “Collar,” Three 6 cements its status as hip-hop’s foremost pimp apologist act, lamenting this time around that it’s “never easy for a player in the ‘hood on the come-up.” Dehumanizing sexual implications aside, the Mafia is nonpareil at crafting woozily propulsive street hits -- just this week, the group began collaborating on Paris Hilton’s upcoming album. Cost: 99 cents.

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“The Lunatik”

Golden State

www.goldenstatetheband.com

Judging by the songs on their “Splinter Out” EP, local five-piece Golden State never met a soaring ballad they couldn’t drive all the way home. On “The Lunatik,” the group balances Coldplay’s tuneful delicacy with something of Tom Petty’s rough-around-the-edges FM radio plaintiveness. It’s a song about new love -- but moreover, the bewilderment that comes with giving in to sudden emotional attachment -- shot through with Eno-ish electronic expansiveness.