You might be interested in www.emusic.com, which has a deep catalog of a bunch of indie labels. You pay X amount per month for a set number of downloads; there are different levels you can sign up for. They’ve got punk, classical, jazz, blues, folk, hip-hop, reggae, world, and on and on; I never log in without finding a zillion things I want. It’s all really cleverly interlinked, too; worth a look.
First is The Steve Morse Band. In the guitar world Steve Morse is well known. Outside of the guitar world, well, not so much. He has won Grammys, played and recorded with some insanely great musicians like Pavarotti, Marcel Dadi, Michael Manring, and Manuel Barrueco. His band is amazing and they have also played with some other heavy weights.
Some of the guys in Dream Theater have done some really interesting outside work. Liquid Tension Experiment has a couple great CDs out and it is a couple Dream Theater guys with Tony Levin. Basically they all have side projects and they are all worth listening to.
If you ever get a chance to see Lyle Lovette in concert GO! He is pretty well known, mostly for the whole Julia Roberts thing, but he puts on a hell of a show. Absolutely top notch musicianship and it is also a lot of fun.
Slee
Ahh, I just heard Liquid Tension Experiment for the first time yesterday, and I quite liked them. Didn’t realise they were related to Dream Theater, who I adore. Speaking of Dream Theater side projects, Chroma Key is cool, though I am bad at explaining what - Dream Theater’s ex-keyboardist’s solo project. Check out http://www.chromakey.com/
I’d like to second dotchan’s recommendation of video game music, and add the Xenogears soundtrack. There is also a live version of some of the songs. The album is called Creid and it’s great.
And thirdly, I agree with ultrafilter’s recommendation of Perdition City. 
Fourthly, some bands I recommend are Arcturus and Elvenking.
Cheese louise, I know half those people, and I know people who know the other half.
Trust me, 1920s style jazz is obscure. In terms of public identity it ranks somewhere between plainchant and filk. At least until someone perfects a 1920s style jazz ray.
II would reccommend Benninghoff’s Bad Rock Blues Band.
My standard recommendation in these threads: Orchestra Baobab, a band from Senegal playing Cuban-flavored dance music. Pirates Choice, a double album, was recorded 20 years ago and is a desert island album for me. (astro honey – let me send you a copy of this as a thank your for you know what [wink wink nudge nudge say no more]).
The Gathering is, in my opinion, one of the most underappreciated bands in the world. I’d recommend most everything that they’ve done from Mandylion onward (which is when Anneke van Giersbergen joined as vocalist) but I’d give the highest recomendation to If_Then_Else, Souvenirs, and How to Measure a Planet?. Sleepy Buildings is a beautiful live album and a good intro to their songs, although it is almost entirely acoustic, and so you don’t get the full effect of what they are doing with their music on the albums.
And I’ll second the recommendation for Rasputina. Their latest live album A Radical Recital has a number of their best songs, and in my opinion the live versions of several of those songs are better than the studio versions.
Say, I didn’t see it mentioned, but did you try music-map.com for music reccomendations? Someone other doper mentioned it, awhile back, and I thought it was pretty interesting.
Better off Dad.
www.betteroffdad.com
Lead singer is 15 years old, and is alredy getting major label interest. Kind a folk thing.
Ry Cooder.
My secret music is not-so-secret. Every month I put a dozen selections from my collection of 78 RPM records on my web site, Swazoo Koolak’s Web Jukebox. This month’s selections are all female vocalists. Other common monthly themes are male vocalists, jazz, dance bands, blues and novelty records.
ok I know this has little to do with the thread but… If you know half those people there is a good chance I know you, or more likely am friends with someone who knows you (I have a tendency towards painful shyness and rarely introduce myself to strangers). How about the California Navels, you know them too? Bumping up the obscurity meter to 100, they are a local Los Angeles band that I think hasn’t recorded anything but plays similar music. (does the inclusion of another obscure band make this not a hijack?)
So I guess the moral of this story is, everyone should listen to more 1920’s style jazz.
The Oblio Joes and the Volumen. They are both from Missoula and apparently have near-zero penetration everywhere else; the only way I hear them is when my local college radio station plays a song or two by them. Amazon knows nothing about either of them.
Speaking of music I only hear on my college radio station, there is a song only mentioned on one website I’ve ever been able to google up, and I first found it tonight in the course of writing this post. (Am I good or am I good? ;)) That song is “All I Want” by Kenny Brown (scroll down a bit). Here is his website, and apparently you can buy the album that song is off of (Stingray) from Amazon.
Whoopee for me. Whoopee for stream-of-surfing posting.
I should clarify my second paragraph: The reason I was unable to find that song online is because the college radio station only rarely has DJs working at it. Mostly, it’s just a CD player set on autopilot and that song happens to be in rotation. Since there are no introductions, I have to google lyrics. Which, while usually very successful, completely failed me in this case.
Thee More Shallows - the lovechild of Grandaddy and Sparklehorse raised by GodspeedYouBlackEmperor
For just plain nice, easy listening: The Carpenters, John Denver
For incredible lyrics and overall good music: Al Stewart
For contemporary New Age/Jazz: Enya, Acoustic Alchemy
For some of the most incredible guitar work ever: Michael Hedges
For the Los Angelino’s out there…Oh heck for EVERYONE I strongly recommend that you check out Weed Patch. An excellent combination of (as their web site proclaims) indie-rock and Americana in a sound that can be refered to as “fucked up folk.”
They’ve got some streaming music on their web site.
Weed Patch
Personally, I like the songs Let go of the wheel, Like California, and Sandy Koufax the best.
Enjoy!
One of my favorite bands is Domestic Problems. Originating out of the Grand Rapids, Michigan area, they took their name from the Aretha Franklin diner scene in the Blues Brother’s movie. Elwood says something along the lines of “Ma’am, this is more important than any domestic problems you may be having.”
Their style of music is similar to the Barenaked Ladies, but with an added trumpet (who plays mandolin as well) and a saxapone (who plays flute as well). They also added a keyboardist in their later years. They’re currently on an indefinite hiatus from performing and recording. The website is here: http://www.domesticproblems.com/
Joe Henry. His most recent release is Tiny Voices and it’s brilliant. He’s a singer/songwriter who writes songs about ordinary people exraordinarrily. Tiny Voices sounds like a discussion among a group of carny people sitting around the Midway after the show has closed. They’re drinking beer and matter of factly telling stories about their lives. Joe Henry is a great talent writing great songs and it’s a crime that he’s not better known.
James McMurtry is also unjustly neglected. He plays pretty much straight traditional rock. Think John Mellencamp. What makes him special is his song writing ablity. Each song is a short story usually about lost, alienated or displaced people struggling to understand about how they got to be where they are in their lives. He can be ironic, sarcastic, mordant, poetic and sometimes LOL funny. His father is Larry McMurtry and James has inherited his writing gift.
For a real change of pace, I suggest The Maedieval babes. They sing music from the medieval ages and the early Rennaisance in many different languages. The harmonies are wonderful and the music is treated respectfully, sometimes in traditional arrangements and sometimes more modernly.
Three words…
Asylum Street Spankers.