Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.

Perhaps it's no surprise that the greatest patriotic films ever made about the United States were also made by the United States…and I’m not talking about how Michael Bay somehow convinces the army to help him make movies time and time again. During World War II, and also slightly before we actually entered the war, a number of Hollywood directors entered various branches of the military to make films supporting the war effort. The list of patriotic luminaries included such famed directors as John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler, Darryl Zanuck and, most importantly, Frank Capra.

Although the music blogosphere isn't fawning over him, Jonathan Coulton is one of the most successful truly independent recording artists ever.  He cultivated a devoted web following by offering his music for free on his website and he has an abundant knack for melding pop melodies with comedy.  After the success of his ambitious Song a Week project, Coulton wrote the song "Still Alive" for Portal and secured his cult status. His first DVD, Best. Concert. Ever. just hit store shelves.

On the day before St. Patrick’s Day 2005, a young Irishwoman named Catherine Ireton auditioned for a singing role on the soundtrack to a movie that didn’t yet exist. The film was to be called God Help The Girl, and the man behind the project was Stuart Murdoch, founder of Scottish chamber-pop ensemble Belle and Sebastian. Murdoch had, in his decade-long career, written songs about white-collar crime, middle-aged sex, martial artists, track stars, cyclists, priests, bookworms and awkward teenagers. The cover of his band’s first album depicted a woman breast-feeding a stuffed tiger. By his standards, a phantom soundtrack wasn’t especially odd.

If Vampire Weekend and Ra Ra Riot were considered buzzy, then Discovery could be described as fizzy—the musical equivalent of opening up a just-shaken bottle of orange soda on a hot summer day. Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend's keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist) and Wes Miles (Ra Ra Riot’s lead singer) comprise this long-running side project, which makes sticky-sweet synth-pop laced with gauzy vocal harmonies that float over the frenetic romp of 808 bass lines and hi-hat beats. The friends have been composing tunes sporadically since 2005 (before either of their respective indie-rock bands had even formed) and will finally share them with the world on Discovery's full-length debut, LP, due July 7. 

As you might have gleaned from all the Wilco hubbub at PasteMagazine.com today, the band has a brand-new record out today—Wilco (The Album). So Paste has taken the occasion to talk  with Wilco bassist and original member John Stirratt and guitarist Nels Cline, who joined the band shortly after the release of 2004's A Ghost Is Born and has become an integral part its sound.

Just about anyone who's heard Wilco's magnum opus Yankee Hotel Foxtrot can remember the song “Poor Places,” but not necessarily for the melody, lyrics or Jeff Tweedy's inimitable crooning. No, what sticks out most is the the bone-chilling final 45 seconds of the song, where a woman’s voice robotically repeats the words “Yankee. Hotel. Foxtrot.” The true nature of those three words is far more eerie and mysterious than a mere disembodied voice repeating a sequence of the NATO alphabet. It's a recording of a numbers station: a broadcast of indeterminate location that transmits coded shortwave radio messages for top-secret purposes.

Spencer Tweedy is 13 years old and lives in Chicago. He's a pretty ordinary kid: He just finished up 7th grade (he likes school, but hears high school is way better and the girls are less dumb) and had his Bar Mitzvah this spring. At the moment, Spencer is really into photography, hanging out with his friends, reading (he just finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which he loved) and, of course, music. We know all of this because Spencer Tweedy writes about his life in delightfully self-assured adolescent detail on his blog and his Tumblr and his Twitter.

I’ve seen my share of beer-heaving, mosh pit-circling shows; I used to watch my brother who was a drummer in a heavy-metal band. But nothing will compare to the wildest concert I’ve ever attended. The night Wilco played at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Mo. will forever be etched in my mind with images of Fez hats and Jeff Tweedy punching a boisterous stage crasher.

Upon close examination of choice Wilco songs, Jeff Tweedy's sanity comes into question. Or maybe the man's just deeper than the rest of us. Regardless, he has a tendency of throwing around random phrases pretty haphazardly, and as a result, Wilco songs don't exactly have a reputation of being crystal clear. As it turns out, the members of Wilco have written many of their songs collaboratively, using an old surrealist word game that allows each member to type a line on the typewriter while only being able to read the previous line. This explains a lot. At any rate, Tweedy and Co. will always keep us guessing when it comes to the meaning of their songs. Here are five lyrics that we take a stab at.

It's no secret that Paste kind of has a thing for the band Wilco. Each of the three studio albums they've released since we started our magazine has ended up on our year-end Top 10 lists. We've put Jeff Tweedy on our cover once, and featured the band countless times both in the magazine and on the website. What else can we do to profess a love that began way back in the Uncle Tupelo days before the great Tweedy/Farrar split? Well, we can give them the whole website in honor of Wilco (the album), which gets its release today.