We‰’ve all seen those Blackberry commercials. The “Love What You Do‰” campaign consists of thirty-second spots blatantly calculated for the 18-to-34 crowd, featuring twenty-somethings doing unique young person activities with the help of their fancy new phones. Come on, Blackberry, we all know the dude who can‰’t get a proper job other than a bike messenger is jacking his mom’s phone upgrade to snag your glitzy touchscreen model. And can we borrow your faux-Diplo DJ’s throw pillow embroidered with his stage name?

Of course, no desperately pandering TV spot is complete without an indie-rock soundtrack, and though Blackberry could have gone with a more logical clip (the oohs from “White Sky‰” come to mind) they instead snatched the wordless refrain of “Fiya‰Û, from kitchen sink-folk project tUne-yArDs. tUne-yArDs is the creation of Merrill Garbus, who recorded her entire first release BiRd-BrAiNs in her house on her computer. Enjoying the album requires having a stomach for lo-fi, with the fuzziness even bordering on painful at times. But Garbus has a knack for crafting melodies simultaneously childlike and transcendent, and the standout tracks on BiRd-BrAiNs embed themselves in your stomach and beg to be listened to over and over. Garbus‰’s chief instrument is the ukelele, mixed with recordings of children‰’s voices and primitive, clattering percussion. The result is pure sonic clutter, and Garbus‰’s dark, angry lyrics merely add to the roughness of BiRd-BrAiNs.

One of the comments on the YouTube video for the Blackberry commercial describes Garbus‰’s voice with suprising accuracy: “it sounds like a guy yelling while hes falling down a mountain.‰” Garbus indeed spends much of BiRd-BrAiNs squawking, bellowing and just plain yelling her refrains, and though the comment isn‰’t meant to be complimentary, it pinpoints the versatility and raw power of Garbus‰’s vocals. Garbus‰’s distinctive voice takes many forms, as she shifts from a low, masculine purr to a soft head voice to her piercing howl, oftentimes in the same breath. Garbus doesn‰’t hesitate from sounding downright ugly at moments, but she never loses control of her squawking vocals which always rectify themselves into a soothing equilibrium.

A new tUne-yArDs single recently surfaced, called “Bizness.‰” Immediately noticeable is how much the improved recording quality enhances everything that made BiRd-BrAiNs enjoyable. It sounds crisper and cleaner, and there isn‰’t any fuzz to hinder Garbus‰’s soaring vocals. The instrumentation is more complex (horns!!!), but still maintains the clattering, charm of BiRd-BrAiNs, and gives us a promising look at what‰’s next for Garbus.

However, if you appreciate tUne-yArDs for anything, it should be for the standout track on BiRd-BrAiNs ‰ÛÒ bringing us back to “Fiya‰Û. The joke‰’s on Blackberry, because “Fiya‰” is a song about being consumed with crippling self-loathing. However, the Blackberry marketing team stumbled upon an incredible song that features Garbus‰’s most joyful melody yet. Every part of “Fiya‰” – the recorded kid‰’s shrieks in the beginning, the tinny ukelele, the slow-building percussion, and the song‰’s soaring climax ‰ÛÒ is perfectly constructed, and the song‰’s rough, primitive ugliness, while maybe not ideal for selling phones, results in its own twisted form of beauty.