Kevin,
you haven't heard of the foo fighters? before I give you a hard time about that, tell me what japanese bands I should know about but don't. not one of teose grrrrl bands with a lot of shrieking. foo fighters have a couple of good songs and a bunch of boring ones, kinda straighforward hard-ish rock. their frontman is dave grolsch who was the drummer for nirvana. he writes and sings better than you'd expect from a drummer but still.
new stuff that i'm listening to these days: the delgados (scottish band with deceptively sweet melodies and harmonies, mostly acoustic, and brutaly depressing lyrics) and radiohead. not sure why the uk kick except that they do downer music really well.