Fountains of Wayne is one of my happiest discoveries in recent years (actually, it’s not so recent… I first heard them in 2000).

It was the song ‘Denise’ from the Utopia Parkway album that caught my attention. It was on a sampler CD in an indie music magazine and I loved it instantly. For some reason, I thought FOW was a Christian rock band… maybe I was confusing them with Jars of Clay. So it was a happy surprise to learn they were actually fierce, clever ironists with a great sense of humor and a knack for killer hooks.

Utopia Parkway is a great album — a concept piece about teenage life in the suburbs of New York and New Jersey — as is their self-titled debut. But for my money, they hit a peak with their third album, Welcome Interstate Managers.

The album is best known for the MILF-tastic hit ‘Stacy’s Mom’ but it’s chock full of great songs, both hip and heartfelt. Today’s song, ‘Hackensack,’ is a bit of both. It’s a sad little tale about a small-town guy who has seen the girl of his dreams flee to L.A. and hit it big in showbiz while he works for his father “scraping the paint off of hard wood floors.”