The season of new life is under-represented in popular music

Ahh, spring. Lambs blossoming, birds gambolling through fields, trees twittering - or something to that effect. The season of new life is tragically under-represented in popular music - rock in particular is guilty of an adolescent fascination with the darkness of autumn and winter. Hailing from New Mexico, the Shins are a glorious exception to this; their every guitar strum sounds like a collective attempt to shake off the frosty sleep of winter.

The opening track off Chutes Too Narrow, their 2003 album, typifies the exhilarating, wide-eyed naivety of the band's shamelessly upbeat style. Handclaps and an intro on acoustic guitar on "Kissing the Lipless" are followed by glorious electric riffs that are surely the closest pop music can get to pulling back the curtains on a dewy April morning. The same album provides a perfect soundtrack to the lengthening evenings - "Pink Bullets" may speak of "warm light on a winter day" but its sound is pure spring breeze: all gentle acoustic strumming and sugar-sweet vocals rich in quiet reflection.

The Shins' one brush with fame to date is now the stuff of indie legend. Zach Braff's heart-warming cult flick Garden State features Natalie Portman as the offbeat, coquettish Sam. One of her opening gambits to the film's hero secures her place as the ultimate thinking indie-boy's crumpet: "You've got to hear this one song," she implores. "It'll change your life, I swear." The track on her headphones is the Shins' "New Slang", and her statement is barely a hyperbole.

It's the greatest love song Nick Drake never wrote, and it also shows that, yes, skinny white boys are capable of heart-rending vocal harmonies after all (with apologies to the Bee Gees, of course). "Know Your Onion", another track from the band's 2001 debut album, Oh, Inverted World, is another should-be classic, wearing its giddy delirium proudly on its (short) sleeves. All of these are available on iTunes, and so will be the band's new album, due in the summer.

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