I’m a little behind the curve on this one, but this past year I’ve become hooked on Pandora.com. Pandora is a website that allows you to build your own radio station. You select an artist and the website plays that group’s music plus music from similar artists. You can also add featured artist to expand the scope. You get 40 hours free a month and I’ve yet to come close to that limit.

It’s a cool idea, but some stations work better than others. I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan so the first thing I did was create a Cohen station. It drew in the expected — Dylan, Van Morrison, etc. — but also deeply plumbed the depths of the sub-genre of depressed male artists. Some of these guys I was not familiar with at all because their careers had been tragically cut short by self-inflicted death. I still listen to the Cohen station but in limited doses.

I created a few other stations, including Irish music and punk, but all stations seemed to eventually lead to the Barenaked Ladies, a group I don’t particularly care for. I can only assume that Pandora treats the Barenaked Ladies as Spankle to cover over gaps in genres.

A few weeks ago, though, I struck Pandora gold with a station based on Galactic, a New Orleans-based jazz and funk group. It’s an evolution of the Meters, a legendary New Orleans band. I added Dessa, a Minneapolis-based hip hop artist and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group that revise pre-World War II black string band music to the featured artist list. As an aside, Central Washington University should bring this group to campus next year. It would fit the school’s mission of featuring culturally diverse groups, plus it’s a bit of a music history lesson. The result is a station that consistently plays, high-energy, fun music.

So, that’s my Pandora tip for the day. If you have a station that works for you let me know and we’ll share it with the class.