The O.C. Effect

Every good movie director has a composer that they can depend on to score a dynamite soundtrack that will not only bolster their film but will roll off the shelves into the eager hands of film fans willing to spend more than just the ticket price. Steven Spielberg has John Williams. Tim Burton has Danny Elfman. And Zach Braff has, well, James Mercer of The Shins. Actually, Mercer didn't exactly score Braff's filmmaking debut, the 20-something-friendly Garden State, but he agreed to let Braff feature not one but two Shins songs from their debut album, Oh, Inverted World. Braff, who lists The Shins as his favorite band, not only featured a double dose of Oh, Inverted World in Garden State, but also had Natalie Portman's character telling his character that The Shins will change his life. Actually, it's more like he changed their life. The result? Album sales for Oh, Inverted World have tripled since the film's release in August, and The Shins have become a household name alongside more well-known indie acts like the Flaming Lips and Wilco.

Indeed, in the last year, more and more indie bands have made their way into the mainstream through movie soundtracks, television appearances that are written into the plots of the shows and, most important, Fox's The O.C., a show whose characters may be a bit trashy but whose writers seem to have impressive musical taste. This sudden upsurge of music that is – gasp! – considered to be good in the eyes of elitist hipsters and rock critics alike is surprising, proving extremely beneficial to bands like The Shins and Death Cab for Cutie in terms of exposure – and cold hard cash. It seems like a winning formula for all parties involved, except for the original fans, who smell sell out. But ultimately, with more and more music fans recognizing bands that would otherwise garner little or no attention, why can't these diehard fans be happy for Death Cab and The Shins' success?

The recent surge of indie bands gaining recognition via participation in the plotlines of a television show started last year, when two characters on The O.C. began arguing about Death Cab for Cutie while listening to one of their songs. One of the characters, Seth, says "Don't dis the Death Cab." Viewers at home agreed. Since then Death Cab has sold almost two hundred thousand copies of 2003's Transatlanticism, and, recently, got themselves signed to a major label, Atlantic.

Death Cab is the most famous instance of what I'll call 'The O.C. effect,' but dozens of other relatively unknown bands have crept onto the show's soundtrack over the last year. Pop rockers Rooney made the sole live appearance on the show last season and saw a near tripling of their album sales. And this season, the Walkmen, the Killers, Modest Mouse and the Thrills will all get their chance to pretend to strum their guitars in front of Mischa Barton.

In November, The Walkmen appeared live on the show, playing two tracks off its album Bows & Arrows. Singer Hamilton Leithauser enjoyed his experience filming the show, though he felt that the staged enthusiasm for the band was a bit much. "There were maybe two hundred extras on the set pretending to just love us, and I had to sing along with the music, and of course everyone else is fake playing – they're not even plugged in," Leithauser said. "So it was really an awkward scene for me, but I think you're just supposed to stand there and look cool anyhow, so I just tried to do that."

Leithauser, who was surprised the show allowed the Walkmen to play two songs, sees television performances as a solid, if ephemeral, means of promotion. "I don't think we'll gain fans," Leithauser said. "I think people will buy the record though. I think a lot of people bought the record after we were on Dave Letterman and Conan, but I don't think you can really gain actual fans who are going to really care about the band through such a mass-market thing."