A recent conversation with a friend has unearthed a common problem when it comes to music fans in Japan: J-Pop has drowned out everything remotely cool about this country’s music scene, and it’s hard to find stuff that isn’t AKB48.

To help with that problem, I’m going to semi-regularly post videos from Japanese musicians who made, or are making stuff, as an alternative to standard J-Pop fare.

The first act on the dub plate: The Pizzicato Five, leaders of Japan’s Shibuya-Kei music scene of the early-to-late 1990s. While American kids were plugging into “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Japan was blasting the P5: A weird mix of Bossa Nova, French Ye-Ye and Electronic/Trip Hop music.

Pizzicato Five also had a great sense of style, incorporating French ’60s fashion with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, clear in their black-and-white videos, big boots and bright fonts.

That said, when I saw these guys live just before they broke up in 2001, I was also treated to a show that made heavy use of edited footage from the “Air Bud” films. (Can’t find that on YouTube, unfortunately).

Anyway, the band sort of drifted into smooth-jazz territory by the end of the decade, and finally broke up in 2001.