I've been suddenly, belatedly turned on to The Seatbelts, a Japanese jazz outfit active from 1998-2004.

The Seatbelts are mostly the creation of one woman, Yoko Kanno, who acted as composer and leader of a deep, rotating pool of backing musicians. But most people know The Seatbelts as the band from the anime series Cowboy Bebop. Here's the title sequence, featuring a truncated version of The Seatbelts' "Tank!"

And here's the same song performed live.

If you like this track (and honestly! how could you not?!) you'll probably dig their entire range. Not everything is as brassy as "Tank!" and the style veers from blues to funk to electronica to noodling light jazz. Yoko Kanno wrote seven albums worth of music for all 26 episodes of Cowboy Bebop, including the 2001 movie.

It's tough to find The Seatbelts online. Nothing on iTunes, nothing on Amazon, nothing on eMusic. But here's a few tracks I put into a mixtape:
"Piano Black"
"What Planet Is This"
"Space Lion"
http://www.mixwit.com/widgets/827f503e776817ce413d7cbe4c7878b1

And if you're comfortable with torrents (software here, search here), you might have some luck.

Dan
(writing projects and current releases)