TUNE IN

I've said it before and I'll say it again: God bless the Internets.

My latest find to elicit such joy is tunefind.com, a site that bills itself as striving to be "the Internet's most comprehensive list of television and movie music and songs." Now that it's fashionable for the hippest TV shows to feature hip indie music, and for hip movies, post-"Garden State," to pack their soundtracks with grooviness, it's nice to have a place to go when you're sent down the path of "What was that song?".

The site started in 2005, when its creator got frustrated with doing what you and I have done a million times: You hear a song during a poignant moment in your favorite show, and you've GOTTA know what it was, and who it was by. So you google it, usually with varying levels of success. Tunefind.com aims to streamline the process a bit.

You can search by keyword, or browse from lists of shows or movies. The first time I found this site, I was looking for a song that played at the end of a "House" episode. So I pulled down the TV list to "House" and found a list of episodes, with a sublist under each of the songs/artists played. The one I heard was "Gravity" by John Mayer, by the way. But in my browsing I also learned that "House" has featured songs by Snow Patrol, Ben Harper, Ryan Adams and Michael Penn.

The site was started in 2005, so don't expect an extensive archive. And it's totally user-based -- people post voluntarily -- so not every TV show or movie is represented. But what is there shows up very quickly, so if you hear something great on "Heroes" tonight, check tunefind.com and you'll probably see it before bedtime.

And if you like to entertain yourself with "Name That Tune" while you watch your stories, you can be a bud and post the names and artists of the songs your hear on the site. Just log in and share your knowledge, smartypants. You'll be helping out a lot of folks who want to learn more about the cool songs they've heard. Think of it as charity for those who otherwise would have only Top-40 radio to shape their musical taste. Who says TV is an idiot box?