'Tell Me What You Want,' by the Black Hollies

Jersey City, N.J.'s Black Hollies may be a digital-age band, but they make music that reaches back to a bygone era when computers were room-size monstrosities operated by punch cards. The band's mid-'60s retro-freakbeat sound is almost as big (and just as archaic) as an IBM mainframe, which makes this commercial pairing with Dell's super-sleek small-business Vostro laptop more than a little incongruous.

Some ad critics have already posted complaints about the band's overdriven, amp-frying recording style, but that's practically the fifth instrument of this type of music. Whether or not it's your bag, it's undeniably in your face, and Dell, like any advertiser, surely wants to get up in your face.

The Black Hollies don't do subtlety. The tangerines-and-dandelions vibe of their newly released second album, 'Casting Shadows,' loudly declares its allegiance to the 'Crimson and Clover' era of mod psychedelia. Even the song titles ('Paisley Pattern Ground,' 'Whispers Beneath the Willows') take a mallet to the musical notion of fuzzy hallucination.

"Some acts are content to find a style and stick with it," reads the band's official bio. "The Black Hollies are more interested in progress." Progress, in this case, is most definitely a relative term. Compared to the songs on the new album, 'Tell Me What You Want,' which first appeared on a 2005 single, is like the difference between the Stones covering Bo Diddley and the Stones dreaming up '2000 Light Years from Home.' Or the difference between an old punch-card mainframe and ... oh, let's say, a floppy disc.

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