I'm as Jewish as they come, but there's one particular part of  religion in general that I love more than any other - the music.  There's only one problem.  There's a serious dearth of really good, well-produced modern American music coming from secular, yet  believing Jews.   That's not to say that it's non-existent, but when I turn on the local Christian pop stations I am blown away by the amout of really good rock/pop that comes out.  The fact is that if you take out the occassional mention of Jesus and the Trinity, the themes of love, forgiveness and just wanting life to be better are universal.

I'm working from home today and flipping through the satellite channels and I stumbled across The Gospel Music Channel which had a program with music videos from the newest crop of  young Christian stars.  The first video I saw could have been on MTV - a great teen pop sound from Stacie Orrico.  The song was "More To Life (There's Gotta Be)" - video here.  The track was  The second video was "You Decide" by a group called Fireflight.  The song will play automatically if you visit their homepage.  The video is mostly of the group playing and singing in an abandoned building setting and really shows off the passions of the group (no pun intended).  It reminds me a lot of "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence.  "Save me from the nothing I've become..." - man I love those lyrics. Being a semi-old fart, I'm also impressed with the bands links to their own icons and flickr photos for fans to connect with their own websites.  I'm sure this kind of thing is common, but I hadn't seen it before.  Much of "You Decide" remind me a lot of

"Jesus Take The Wheel" by Carrie Underwood still makes me cry every time I hear it. (Although in this case, I would say listen without watching the video - let your own imagination create the characters in the song).