Who the heck are the Fleet Foxes? Find out here!

Anyone who watched the most boring "SNL" in months last night, co-hosted by poor Rosario Dawson, was probably jolted back awake (like me) by the unusual and anachronistic musical strains of a strange little group called the Fleet Foxes.

The vocalist-guitarist is Robin Pecknold, and he sounds -- and looks -- more like a wandering minstrel or a 12th century troubadour than a rocker.

According to L.A. Times reviewer Steve Appleford, "Fleet Foxes is a band of five young dudes from Seattle who look as if they've just come down from the mountain in their beards and flannel shirts and who call themselves "not much of a rock band." You can hear why amid the rustic folk and beatific vocal harmonies of their songs, which blend genres and eras into a gentle whole rooted on some melodic astral plane."

Enjoy their videos here. I've already downloaded their album from ITunes. Here's their MySpace blog.

Oh, about their cover art?

The cover detail of the 1559 painting Netherlandish Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Pecknold says: "When you first see that painting it's very bucolic, but when you look closer there's all this really strange stuff going on, like dudes defecating coins into the river and people on fire, people carving a live sheep, this weird dude who looks like a tree root sitting around with a dog. There's all this really weird stuff going on. I liked that the first impression is that it's just pretty, but then you realize that the scene is this weird chaos. I like that you can't really take it for what it is, that you're first impression of it is wrong.'

It's hard to spot the strange stuff unless you inspect it up close. So you'll just have to buy their CD.

Photo: Fleet Foxes