Weird promo dept.: Pop duo the Bird and Bee have recorded Interpreting the Masters Vol. 1: Hall and Oates, and I’ve enjoyed it far more than I ever liked Hall and Oates. The ’80s pop period was a little soft for me, and there was always a division of labor issue that was oddly perplexing: What exactly did John Oates bring to the table? Considering the attention that has been focused on his moustache, I suspect I wasn’t alone in this concern.

Singer Inara George makes the songs smaller and more intimate, which almost always suits them better, and multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin creates gently lush settings for her voice, settings that seem to take their cues from “Sara Smile” and “One on One.”

The album’s due out March 23, but if you’re willing to scrounge the Web, you can hear it now. Evidently each track is supposed to be on a different Web site – AOL Spinner, BrooklynVegan, Entertainment Weekly, Idolator, MySpace, PerezHilton, Prefix, Spin, and USA Today – but I have to admit, I didn’t find them on a quick scan of Spinner and Brooklyn Vegan. Perhaps I was going too quickly, or maybe this is supposed to be a scavenger hunt and I just didn’t try hard enough. Whatever the case, I’m not sure that the best way to create buzz for your album is to hide it.

But it’s worth looking for.