Story by Matt Kivel

The story is well-known by now: Juno director Jason Reitman calls Ellen Page into his office for a meeting and asks her what music precocious protagonist Juno McGuff would listen to. The petite Novia Scotian replies: "The Moldy Peaches" and bang! "Anybody Else But You" finds its way into the ears of housewives and love-sick teenagers everywhere while Juno's soundtrack steamrolls its way to the top of the charts. Well, according to Idolator, Reitman had an entirely different band in mind before Ms. Page rocked his world.

Yo La Tengo, the prolific Hoboken trio, were actually slated to serve as the main soundtrack artist.

Speaking to Idolator, Reitman says:

"We started to realize there was this rebirth of lo-fi music that had the same energy as punk music, but nowhere as angry. The first band we discovered was Yo La Tengo and so I started to think that was the sound of the film."   

Now, Yo La Tengo and The Moldy Peaches -- aside from a few songs -- don't share too much in the ways of sonic style ... especially the whole "lo-fi" thing Reitman's blabbering about, but I can't help but ponder a world where "Stockholm Syndrome" and "Season Of The Shark" soared against the silver screen.

Kimya Dawson and The Moldy Peaches complimented the film well, but Yo La Tengo's music would have lent an entirely different bittersweet undercurrent to the movie's off-beat charm. 

No matter how much the “Juno” soundtrack raises her profile, Kimya Dawson is determined to keep her life simple and grounded.
The anti-folk progenitor is a road warrior, a woman who loves to be on tour and avidly chronicles her journeys on the web. She’s a one-woman operation, selling crafts and art pieces on line, CDs and T-shirts at shows; she keeps her recordings simple and sparse and is beginning a write songs and a book for children. At home, where her baby is now 18 months old, she’s been spending a lot of time painting, less time writing music.
Her bio notes: “she is on a mission to embrace the whole world” and she seems more than happy to play to just about any crowd. Mixed among her current collection of in-stores and club gigs on the East Coast is a show at a hippie commune in rural Virginia. Dawson’s payment? A hammock to sleep in.
“And I hope they'll take me on a tour of their tofu-making operation,” she adds, pointing up her interest in self-sustaining environments and the people who live in them.
Her own home environment is in Olympia, Wash., where she lives with her musician husband Angelo Spencer and daughter Panda. It’s where she created Moldy Peaches with Adam Green and sparked a groundswell of interest in primitive, confessional folk songs and remains committed to the people who have been supporting her all along.
“It's a matter of figuring out how to maintain a sense of community,” she says, appearing uncomfortable forecasting any sort of change now that her music is reaching a far larger audience thanks to “Juno.” The soundtrack was No. 3 in the U.S. last week, selling 68,000 copies and is expected to vie for the top of the chart next week.
It’s a distant commercial cry from the response her fifth album, the acclaimed “Remember That I Love You” (K Records), received when it was released in May 2006 on K Records.