So in the past month, we’ve gotten My Morning Jacket and Bright Eyes and M. Ward as the Monsters of Folk, Beck’s whoever-is-in-town covers project, Thom Yorke and Flea forming a new band, Johnny Greenwood and K.T. Tunstall and Crowded House and Wilco launching 7 Worlds Collide, and now the Shins’ James Mercer is teaming up with Danger Mouse. What’s going on here?

What if, instead of saying these artists were forming supergroups, we said that they were mashing themselves up? So instead of waiting for someone to put a Radiohead vocal over a bassline from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Yorke and Flea decide to do it themselves? Instead of wondering how Tunstall would sound fronting Wilco, they get together in New Zealand and just do it? Let’s not forget that Danger Mouse himself helped launch the mash-up movement into the mainstream in 2004 with his Grey Album mash-up of Jay-Z and the Beatles. The combination seemed quite novel at the time, but if Jay-Z announced he was doing a remix to be included in the Beatles Rock Band sequel, would anyone be surprised?

I wouldn’t be. As a term, “supergroups” is no longer sufficient to explain what’s going on here. “Mash-up” no longer refers only to a song; these days, a band itself may be a mash-up.