One of the nice benefits of the new media outlets on the Internet is the ability to preview non-English language music – both modern and traditional.

If you are in a Russian frame of mind, you may enjoy Far From Moscow, a blog about the Russian Pop music scene. It’s from UCLA and written for the American music audience. Entries include clips of sample songs, brief artist bios (with a touch of politics) and links by musical genre (such as reggae and folk). And since it’s from UCLA, I’m assuming that most of the clips are legal (they’re certainly high quality).

I would recommend listening to some of these tracks…even if you don’t know a word of Russian. I’m feeling hipper already