It took Daytrotter to make me a music person. I interviewed musicians like Jay-Z, Weezer and Green Day for my local newspaper back home. I spent a whole summer living with a music snob who would proudly blare her new finds over our slick German sound system for three hours every night. I faced public shame just last week when my iTunes library was deemed unworthy for background music at a party. None of these incidents inspired me to really care about contemporary music. But, after a 45-minute interview with Sean Moeller, founder of the music site Daytrotter.com, I have a newfound, savage obsession.

Whether you identify with my prior music apathy or are grossly appalled that I would even list Jay-Z in an attempt to sound hip, you have to admit that Moeller, who would much rather go by his first name, Sean, has a pretty sweet set-up: His company runs a small studio in downtown Rock Island, Illinois, where, according to Moeller, indie musicians such as Of Montreal and Sunset Rubdown stop “as they drive from one isolated part of the country to the other. Bandmates use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive.”

At the end of the session, about four songs are usually posted onto Daytrotter. These songs — exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks — are entirely free to listen to and download. The site typically features two bands a week; this week’s groups are Koufax and Paleo. Koufax’s “Colour Us Candadian” will make sense to anyone who has studied abroad and felt coerced into hiding his American identity, and Paleo’s slightly mellower version of “November 30, 2006” is the perfect song to play for the significant other that you wish you had. Download both tracks now and finish reading this article later.

Moeller’s team is meticulous in making sure that each band passing through gets its own thoughtful review and accompanying original artwork posted online. As Moeller explains in the middle of an exuberant, 10-minute riff, “If you take most of the writing done about music, it’s all, ‘I think these guys are great, they’re amazing.’ There’s a place for that, but I really like being absurd and experimental, really focusing on the band, and what the music conjures in you and really brings.” Daytrotter “really encourages [these sessions] to be different... and for the musicians to be creative,” and the staff fiercely follows the same guiding principles in their work, as well.

After establishing himself on the music-reviewer circuit and discovering that it was soulless, mind-numbing work, Moeller has successfully made Daytrotter into a refuge where other weary reviewers can get back in touch with their majored-in-English-with-an-emphasis-in-Creative-Writing alter egos. Daytrotter’s reviews, which Moeller often writes himself, aren’t the same formulaic piles of fifth-grade reading-level tripe that has infested the genre. And the graphic work, done by Moeller’s illustration team of Shannon Palmer, Josh Frankel, Ryan Flynn, Joe Sayers and Johnnie Clooney, is a thousand times superior to the publicity stills and slick photo-shoot pieces that pepper most MP3 blogs and music magazines. Clicking through the exuberant reviews and arwork gave me the same feeling that I used to get when I crawled through couch-cushion fortresses as a little kid.

According to Moeller, who has recently been compared to a web-based John Peel, “Anybody who really loves music can really swim in our session archives.” I would say that Daytrotter goes beyond this. Anybody who really loves creative expression will fall for this site.

Think that a job at Daytrotter would be cool? If you’re looking for a summer internship, Daytrotter is hiring. They’re looking for really “ad sales people, good graphic artists, and really great writers who want to make good literature.” If interested, contact daytrotter@gmail.com for more information.