Teacher and the Rockbots: http://teacherandtherockbots.com/

Trout Fishing In America has been around for 2 decades, just to name one of the many artists whose appeal to children and parents has been well-documented by people who don't waste all damn day online. Your article is hardly cutting edge.

With that kind of attitude, I hope you stay far, far away from kids.

Really. I find it strange that she get so much hype. I find that her music is no less annoying than any other kid's music.

After my son was born, we made a conscious decision to avoid Raffi, Barney and all that crap. Our music of choice for him has been roots reggae from the beginning. He likes the bass and we can actually listen to it for more than an hour.

As far as actual kids music goes, for my money, TMBG's "Here Come the ABCs" is much more fun to be stuck listening to, and the Putumayo Kids label has several CDs worth of kid's world music that is quite enjoyable.

My kids listen to a pretty wide range of music, which is nonetheless still mostly our music. I have never let Barney or Raffi in the house, but Laurie Berkner is pretty cool and she sure can write a hook.

Some parents have put up most of the chords and tabs of her music online and my kids love to sing along while I play the songs on guitar, not all of which are simple by the way.

It's nice for the kids to have some music which is "theirs" as opposed to "ours".

Plus, when they walk around singing "Under a shady tree, you and me..." my mother is less shocked than when my four year old started channeling Bunny Wailer and started singing "sick and tired of the bullshit games, die and go to heaven in Jesus's name..." on the way out of mass with her grandparents.

Fuck you.

my son loves them but I can't figure it out.

to download songs, hit the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys at the same time twice.

My kids (6 and 3 years old respectively) have liked songs and whole albums by:

Ralph's World; Logan Whitehurst & The Jr. Science Club; The Sippy Cups; Gunnar Madsen; Bill Harley; Trout Fishing In America; Barry Louis Polisar; They Might Be Giants; Old Town School of Folk Music; Eyeball Skeleton; Optigonally Yours; The Aquabats; Jonathan Richman; The Zambonis; Arnette Howard; Captain Bogg and Salty; Jack Johnson; Java Jel; The Candy Band; The Toy Dolls; Shonen Knife; Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Brave Combo; Fatcat & Fishface; Marbles; Apples in Stereo; Spike Jones; Uncle Morey's Mixed-Up Stories for Smart Kids; The Pipettes; Louis Jordan; The Phantom Surfers.

They have a special fondness for the program "Greasy Kids Stuff" on WFMU [http://wfmu.org/playlists/GK]. It seems to be off the schedule for the summer, but there are copious archives available.

And we wish we still lived in DC so that we could go to a Pancake Mountain dance party. [http://www.pancakemountain.com/]

Has anybody been able to download the kinddie rock songs?

I just got the new Rockosaurus Rex "The Bit Bang!" CD and it is incredible. It's by far the best children's music ever. I think they're relatively unkown since it's very new but keep an eye out. rockosaurusrex.com

I don't know, those songs still all sound too folky for my taste. I'm glad there are more and more choices for kids' music out there by indie artists (well some aren't so indie anymore), but they all sound fundamentally the same. The only music I've heard lately that is more like what I listen to, and my toddler really likes, is this new album by a band called Rockosaurus Rex. I heard about them on myspace and bought the album. Totally blows Ms. Berkner away.