I’m trying to remember how I first heard of Tall Dwarfs, and I’m drawing a complete blank. I remember when Tall Dwarfs co-founder Chris Knox suffered a debilitating stroke in 2009, and the subsequent benefit album, and the hilarious video he did afterwards with the New Zealand band Rackets. But I already knew of Knox by then, at least as the guy whose four-track recorder was used for many of the New Zealand indie releases by bands like The Clean and Snapper that I later discovered through covers by musicians like Barbara Manning and Yo La Tengo. Tall Dwarfs, though, sauntered into my consciousness through a side door, there before I had even noticed them or how or when they’d arrived.

And that’s how Tall Dwarfs still functions in my music collection. I own one best-of compilation, which I must have bought off Bandcamp, though I don’t recall when. I don’t know that I’d ever listened to it all the way through before now, but its songs show up on shuffle every once in a while, and I always go “Who is this?” and then am surprised and impressed by the answer.

I’m trying to come up with a way of describing Tall Dwarfs’ music, and I keep coming up with rock-crit verbiage like “lo-fi” and “quirky” and “Syd Barrettesque” and other things that can’t really tell you if you’re going to like it, or even if I like it. Which I do: It’s clearly the sound of two genius madmen with a home recording setup and a ton of ideas, so many that there’s usually only time for two minutes or so before it’s on to the next one. “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” has a great two-chord guitar riff and a catchy melody, and incessantly repeats both of them until they collapse into wordless doo da doo da das; “All My Hollowness to You” consists mostly of hand claps and some kind of vintage organ and the sing-chanted refrain “They want to screw you/I wish I could get through to you,” and you could base an entire music genre on that, and plenty of people have. Other songs are gently alluring in various ways, all fitting comfortably into the broad category of late-20th-century lo-fi quirky indie post-punk rock, though that’s probably in large part thanks to all the other bands, New Zealand and otherwise, that were inspired by Knox and co-conspirator Alec Bathgate.

This is a somewhat unsatisfying entry in this series, for you and me both, I realize, and I was sorely tempted to cheat on the “let iTunes pick” format and spin the wheel for another musician. (It’s even more unsatisfying since I already went through this once before with another band I listen to even less.) But I’m sticking with it, in part because there’s an importance as well to music you don’t listen to, or don’t listen to much, or don’t listen to yet. Also, writing this has led to my longest, hardest listen to Tall Dwarfs to date, and I keep spotting more songs of theirs that I want to pay closer attention to — what are “Road and Hedgehog” and “The Severed Head of Julio” about, have I even listened to those? Figuring out what music you love is a lot of work, but I guess at least it’s work I’m glad never to be finished with.