The new iPods may look kind of squat and funny -- a site that's sprung up to cover them is called FattyNano -- but the music emanating from Apple's latest commercial was so captivating, I had to find out who the singer was.You know the commercial. It's the one where the FattyNano changes colors as a dance video plays on its tiny (but not too tiny for mobile videos) screen. The song is voiced by a woman who sounds deceptively like '70s progressive-rock sensation Kate Bush.

Turns out the iPod girl is actually a singer-songwriter who goes by the name of "Feist." She's Leslie Feist, a 31-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter who's recorded a bunch of albums, the most recent of which is 2007's The Reminder.

The song "1234," off that album, is what's used in the iPod commercial. (If you click on Feist's MySpace page, "1234" will automatically start playing.)

Mild though it is, the song -- and Feist's voice -- just clicks with me. The vibe is calmer than this lady's most recent release, and it's more au courant than this guy's current album.

The video, too, is charming:

(Go here to see a larger version.)

True, this is not to everyone's taste. My teenage daughter said she sounds like she's about to go milk a cow.

It's not often that ads and decent music intersect, even less so when it involves the computer industry. The last case I remember was an extremely short-lived Dell campaign, which enlisted Ben Lee's "Catch My Disease" in the sale of its laptops. (Most amusing lyric: "They don't play me on the radio, and that's the way I like it.")

Dell's selection of the Lee song was more of a shocker than Apple's Feist tie-in, because Apple is hip, in both the good and bad senses. In contrast, a warm, witty song pretty much runs counter to the Dell corporate ethos.

Here's the "Catch My Disease" video:

(Go here to see a larger version.)

While I like both vids, I'm not going to go out and buy a Nano, nor a Dell. I'm sticking with my Samsung YP-Z5, to which I plan on downloading Feist's The Reminder forthwith.

You know, writing about computers isn't a bad way to make a living, but sometimes I just wish I could play a killer guitar.