That’s right, folks: It’s your monthly reminder of the Music Alliance Pact, which we mention this time under the banner of our own intrepid column of international rock recognition (check the first Xenophilia post for the introductory italics.) For those unfamiliar with the Music Alliance Pact, it’s basically a total gestalt of all the potential the internet offers the music scene: a network of select indie music blogs all over the world (only one per country, though) each posting a song by an artist local to the participating blogger. You can stream or download any individual song, or download all at once for a free massive international sampler. Not all of it is exactly miraculous, but every month there’s at least a handful of gems.

This month that honor goes to the Netherlands, whose unadorned pop-melodic Bird on the Wire narrowly beats out the Romanian minimalist opiate-psych of Identitate. Admittedly, Identitate mines the path less traveled by and therefore perhaps more interesting, but there’s just something to the catchy simplicity and unassuming musicianship of Bird on the Wire, that couples with their light touch of melancholy to scratch an itch more readily. Another contender for July favorite would have to be New Zealand’s dark, reverby western/blues rock of the Body Lyre, a name which kinda reminds me of the corpse-constructed instruments played by the vampire band in Tarantino’s From Dusk Til Dawn. The song, “Pig,” contributes to the notion pretty directly, as well.

Check out the whole fandango over at the Romanian blog, Babylon Noise. (Don’t worry, the write-ups for each song are in English.)