First it was the Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots)  playing the Peach Pit rock club inside the plasticity of television's "Beverly Hills 90210." Remember how weird it was hearing character Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering) pontificating, "You know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house."

Other TV shows peddling music have certainly followed, but it wasn't until "The O.C." and its fictional rock club the Bait Shop that we got another taste of bizarrely underground musicians popping up on mainstream television.

But with "The O.C." long gone, who is the next torchbearer of quality, independent music on the tube? It's not a show so much as it is a block of programming: Adult Swim, which takes over cable's Cartoon Network each night after 10 or 11.

Adult Swim is the intelligent pop culture phenomenon that learned from "South Park" and "The Simpsons" and made smart and cool cartoons for adults. One of the programming block's more popular shows, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," is about a carton of French fries, a shapeless wad of meat and a milkshake living together as "Odd Couple"-style roommates.

It may not sound smart, but it is.

Another one of its biggest hits, "Family Guy," was brought back to life on Adult Swim after being canceled by Fox, its original home. Adult Swim has become the most popular block of programming at its time slot for men ages 18-24. And ESPN and MTV couldn't be more jealous.

"Adult Swim is one of the few platforms that actively promotes independent artists," said Amber Eagle, a 26-year-old Adult Swim fanatic who maintains a modest library of "Aqua Teen" and "Brak SHOW" DVD titles in her Capitol Hill apartment. "A lot of TV shows try to cash in on music that's already trendy and popular and don't really look toward lesser-known artists that are emerging - or even artists that are becoming 'the next best thing."'

Not every Adult Swim program showcases music, but many of them do - and the network caught onto the trend early on and has further promoted that angular connection with independent music.

"To me, Adult Swim is definitely more rock 'n' roll than anything else going on in TV," said Jason Reece, founding member of the rock band ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. "It's more edgy, and it's also artistic and surreal and bizarre and just funny. It's nice to watch something that challenges you instead of the regular (expletive)."

Trail of Dead hasn't been featured on any Adult Swim programs yet, according to Reece. But Reece and the band's frontman Conrad Keely are such fans of Adult Swim programming that they've attached themselves to the Coast to Coast Adult Swim Tour, which will bring their band to Colorado for two dates in the coming weeks, Monday in Fort Collins at Colorado State University's Lory Student Center Ballroom and Nov. 11 in Boulder at the University of Colorado's Glenn Miller Ballroom.

It's not just another Trail of Dead tour, either. Both shows are free for college students. And the openers are none other than Dethklok, the cartoon metal band popularized on the Adult Swim program "Metalocolypse." According to adultswimpresents.com, both Colorado dates are sold out.

As Trail of Dead and Dethklok play their own 12-campus rock tour, hip-hopper Ghostface Killah of Wu Tang fame headlined his own 12-campus Adult Swim-sponsored tour in October. It shows the breadth of music covered by the Adult Swim crew - from hip-hop to indie rock to death metal. And it doesn't stop there.

From old-school rapper Schooly D's theme song for "Aqua Teen" to the music-filled website adultswim.com, the programming block has carved out its own niche. Click on the music tab on adultswim.com and you're taken to a page hyping Deth-

klok's new "The Dethalbum" and the soundtrack to the "Aqua Teen" feature-length film, which includes an original ode to Meatwad by hipster-metal band Early Man called "More to Me Than Meat and Eyes."

As the individual shows continue with their inclusion of music, the network is also holding up its own end. In addition to other links to bands that have been associated with Adult Swim - including Danger Doom and Chrome Children - there's a link on the adultswim.com music tab to a free Adult Swim download-only sampler called "Warm & Scratchy," featuring indie rock royalty including

Liars, Broken Social Scene, TV on the Radio, the Raveonettes, Les Savvy Fav, the Rapture and others.

"It wasn't a difficult decision to do the tour," said Trail of Dead's Reece. "Adult Swim is something that we watch and support and find entertaining, and so it was like, 'Why not be part of something like that?' I'm glad that they're trying to incorporate music and get their hands on music and use it as a way to get people to watch their programs."

Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com