I feel so woefully behind sometimes when I am late to the party to discover something really cool, but it didn’t stop me from being amazed by it nonetheless.  This week I was introduced to the wonder that is Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox thanks to a friend’s Facebook post.

The concept is to take popular pop songs, mostly recent, but occasionally something a bit older, and set it in a different time period. Ke$ha and Pitbull’s “Timber” gets transformed into a 1950s doo wop song, as in the above, or Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” gets a bluegrass treatment.

I’ve seen the opinion that the best pop songs can be transfromed successfully into other genres, because they’re so universal and melodically transform.  This takes it to an interesting extreme, but the results are many times more enjoyable than one would expect.

As such, you get a 1920s take on Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe,” above, or an old-time refashioning of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop,” below.

A good chunk of the tracks are available on iTunes as an album; it’s well worth the investment.