Oh my dears, it was a long horrible winter for The Two Koreas -- some of them were under the weather, the rest just couldn't stand it. But like soggy cigarette butts in a melting snow bank, Toronto's preeminent practitioners of jangular electric beat muzik have recently re-emerged with their third release, "Sessions EP," a seven-track, 32-minute survey compiled from two radio performances originally broadcast last year on XM Satellite Radio station The Verge 52. Included on this collection are new recordings of various insta-classics from 2007's "Altruists" (which hit No. 2 on the CBC Radio 3 national album chart and is still in heavy rotation on XM Radio over a year after its release), plus a couple of reheated tasters from 2005's lovably lo-fi debut "Main Plates and Classic Pies" and exactly 2.5 previously unreleased songs. "Sessions EP" is available on Unfamiliar Records in glorious vinyl and somewhat-less-glorious-but-wholly-practical mp3 formats (as no one in the band actually has a functioning CD player hooked up at this point). The new EP was recently feted in Toronto with three shows in one weekend, the first of which was stage-crashed by Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg, a.k.a. Spiral Stairs, who joined The Two Koreas for an encore cover of Pavement's classic academy fight song "Two States." After such a close encounter with one of their heroes, The Two Koreas could conceivably retire happy men — however, they must soldier on, fighting the war against "the kids" and their bad manners and ill-fitting trousers with bruising tones and drones.