"Animals don't commit suicide, but this song is so sad that even animals would want to kill themselves."

Seira Nishigami, vocalist, guitarist and synth player from Osaka-based lo-fi indie trio Jesus Weekend, is trying to explain the feeling behind her group's evocatively titled "Animal Suicides," an eerie instrumental track from her young band's recent mini-album "Agleam."

It's a bold statement and one that immediately sends this writer onto the Web to discover that in fact there are numerous recorded instances of dogs flinging themselves from bridges and ducks intentionally drowning themselves, not to mention termites rupturing their own internal organs and suicide-bomber pea aphids exploding in the face of attacks from larger insects. A predictable side effect to this discovery is that the song now has an accompanying gallery of mental images that will never leave me.