Hard to believe that independent music sites continue to find ways to create social experiences around listening to music in the wake of huge, established communities like last.fm scrobbling and one to one experiences like muxtape playlist sharing. thesixtyone brings band and listener contribution together by letting musicians upload music, while listeners surface the tracks that deserve attention.
It's a nice minimal design that focuses on the experience of playing the new and popular music people are listening to and favoriting. A simple filtering mechanism at the left lets you sort by most active, popular, and recently uploaded while the links at the right allows you to limit by genre. The filters work together, so that your activity and genre selection sticks as you modify either one. Very nicely done.