The State of Electro-Pop Address

Would it be unfair to call electro-pop my favorite music genre? I'm a huge fan of electronica, and I've met enough people who would say that electro-pop is just an offshoot of that. I'm convinced that with all the electronica I've listened to, however, that electro-pop is more than deserving of its own title and its more than fair to label it as its own genre when it comes down to someone determining their favorite one. It definitely has qualities that other types of electronica do not, and in the same way that hardcore is broken down into various subsets that are considered separate genres, I'd definitely say electro-pop can stand by itself. You don't avoid saying that you love "Frasier" because people know you love "Cheers."With all that being said, I'd like to get into a completely separate issue. It wasn't the first CD I ever bought, but The Postal Service's "Give Up" was the first CD I bought to kick off the CD buying era of my life. It was the first album I bought in a string of over two years that has listed through today when I have bought at least one CD a week, and it's never surprising if the number even exceeds that. I'm now around 350 CDs and counting, and I think it's safe to say that music has thoroughly absorbed my life (which is great for my mental health but not so much for my wallet).Wow, I really have a tendency to run off on a tangent, eh? The point is, though, that The Postal Service started it all. I've never, and I mean never, met anyone who hasn't enjoyed at least one track off of that CD, and to be honest, although I find that for whatever reason there is a general aversion to Natural Anthem, I'd say that well over 75% of the people that listened to the album liked every single track. It probably doesn't pain me to say it as much as it probably should, but along with Paul Simon's Graceland, I put "Give Up" as the perfect album.The disc is never repetitive, but always sticks to its roots. It's daring but not eclectic enough to throw you off. It's like the album is one amazing track, but each song is varied enough that you couldn't feasibly say it is. It's the perfect length (although I'd certainly argue I want more), the lyrics do the trick, the choruses demand to be sung, and the verses might as well be choruses. I love DCFC, but I'm one of the few who would say that Ben Gibbard's best work came right here.Believe me, I could go on for days about this thing. But I don't want the length of this to throw you guys away from reading it, so I'm going to cut the brown-nose fest short. Even though I love electro-pop because I am a sucker for synth and the mellow feel characteristic of the genre, I feel like the Postal Service is unique to a fault-not necessarily their fault, though. No band will ever sound like TPS.The more I've thought about it, the more I realize that in the big picture you need that handful of bands that sound like another band. To use a bad example, for Fall Out Boy fans, Panic! at the Disco is like Fall Out Boy is just releasing CDs more often, right? You get the same basic sound in more than one band, and if you love the sound what's the harm in that? So I've been on a mission to find a band comparable. I feel like The Postal Service was the birth of bedroom laptop electro-pop. It's the paradigm for the debatable genre. I bought the Something for Rockets CD, and the sticker on the wrapping boasted "The Postal Service with more libido" or something to that effect. It was a fairly solid album, but the Postal Service? Far from it. One of the closest examples I've found is Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, which I stumbled on completely by accident when I happened to get it in a stack of CDs to review for my college's radio station. The album "Etiquette" was fantastic, but my favorite track on the album, Scattered Pearls, was almost a sort of bubble-gum electro-pop. It was one of the catchiest tunes I've heard in my nineteen years, but it was definitely no Postal Service. I've listened to Marbles, Small Sins, The Knife, Clue to Kalo and others that, again, don't match up. They're all great, but TPS still stands alone.It's probably a good thing that no band is trying to emulate them, I just feel like the genre needs to expand in size. You need to be able to have bands to compare others to. The "recommended if you like" stickers on pre-releases may not always be 100% accurate, and, in fact, rarely are, but you always hear some hint of the comparisons embedded in the music. I know my first reaction to something is, "Wow, this sounds like ___________." That's one of the things I like about music. No matter how different it is, it's always familiar.So that's my statement: a sort of call to arms to electro-pop bands and fans. For bands, it's not so bad to use someone as a heavy influence. For fans, its more direct: I'd love some recommendations. I feel like maybe I haven't even begun to scratch the surface on this genre, and it'd be awesome to hear from you guys.Finally I just want to include a shameless plug to another shameless plug. If any of you guys read this, I'd really appreciate it if, whenever you have the time, you read my post before this about a website my friends and I are working on. Maybe you can write for us! Maybe some of you were so appalled by how much my writing dragged on that you want to show me up and beat me at my own game. Hey, more power to you, either way I'd love an e-mail or two of interested potential staff members.Thanks to anyone who read!