HFS is back! As reported by the City Paper yesterday and USA Today’s Pop Candy column today, the D.C./Baltimore area’s once-mighty alternative rock station has returned to the airwaves at 97.5 on your FM dial, after only existing on HD radio following its 2005 semi-demise.

Okay, so it was never really “mighty” in terms of listenership in the area. And yeah, it rose from its tiny ’70s and ’80s niche status mostly by abandoning its “we don’t play hits” philosophy — back then they’d play everything from a then-unknown Springsteen to Bad Brains to Zappa — to latch onto the burgeoning alt-rock radio revolution of the ’90s; and in so doing ended up playing the same tired tracks that every alt-rock station in the country was playing. Also, there’s the fact that resurrecting an FM radio station in 2011 is sort of like bringing back the Washington Star to the thriving world of newspaper publishing.

But despite its protracted decline and potential modern irrelevance for anyone with a Pandora or Spotify account, anyone with memories of the station’s heyday — or even the flashes of its former self that were occasionally evident throughout that long ’90s slide from free-form greatness — still has a special place in their heart for the station. For me, I discovered the station around 1990, right about the time that I also got my first record store job in high school. The two events dovetailed nicely, ensuring that most of my paychecks would end up being sunk back into records. After knowing little other than DC101 and WJFK’s cock-rock and classic rock stylings, a station where I could hear the Fugazi or Gang of Four’s bracing post-punk sidling up next to some melodic, new-wavy XTC pop, with a Sugarcubes chaser.

That was largely over by the middle of the decade, when every third song was likely to be Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden (or worse, their radio-ready doppelgängers Bush, Stone Temple Pilots and Candlebox), but late night often had a little less structure, and longtime DJ Weasel’s afternoon “My Three Songs” feature remained an outside-the-box feature for many of those years. As the City Paper’s post pointed out, the revived station appears to be aspiring to its most boring days, featuring “your favorite alt-rock tracks by all your fav bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, and a ton more.” A quick listen this afternoon largely bore that out: Bush? Check. Cypress Hill? Check. RHCP? Big love rollercoaster check. But there are some things sneaking into the mix that probably never would have passed muster in HFS 10-15 years ago, either because they didn’t exist or they’re more obscure than what the station would generally play at that point. Here’s what I caught while listening online this afternoon:

Crystal Method — “Busy Child”
Death Cab for Cutie — “You Are a Tourist”
Sponge — “Plowed”
Gorillaz — “Feel Good Inc.”
Primus — “Jerry was a Racecar Driver”
Portugal. The Man — “People Say”
Cypress Hill — “Insane in the Membrane”
Rise Against — “Help is on the Way”
Echo & The Bunnymen — “People Are Strange”
Silversun Pickups — “Lazy Eye”
Red Hot Chili Peppers — “Love Rollercoaster”
Foster the People — “Pumped Up Kicks”
Bush — “Little Things”
Blink-182 — “Stay Together for the Kids”

So, what say you? A welcome return? Or irrelevant regardless of whether or not they’ve improved their programming? Or maybe you just want to wax nostalgic about your own memories of the station’s salad days.