Little Pig, Little Pig, Let Me In.

OK, fine -- The Village Voice BEAT ME TO THIS ONLY A WEEK AGO!!!
Please read mine, then read theirs.

THOUGHT QUESTION:
Why is having "wolf" in your band's name insanely trendy and popular right now?

This is a serious question about the state of our society. My hypotheses:
(1) it's somehow related to the movement in music and post-whatever(punk, i guess?) culture that is into "weird for the sake of weird" or stuff you wouldn't expect "cool indie rock" to do, and really what could be weirder and less cool than wolves, when you could be talking about fashion or computers?
(2) Related to the last part of the first hypothesis, it may be a neo-Luddite commentary on technology and so-called "progress" of culture--the wolf then beceomes a symbol of purposeful "regress" to a more primitive or primal state, which works for a band like Wolf Eyes, though I don't know enough about other Wolf bands to see this one through; I suspect some of them may use computers, and of course all of them use electric guitars.
(3) The Wolf is, in fact, a faux-or-formerly-ironic, "redeemed" symbol of actual cool. Andrew W.K. -- a prime example of transcendant irony becoming mainstream pop-cool -- did name his second album The Wolf, and don't you recall seeing heavy metal t-shirts, or at least t-shirts worn by metal dudes in its heyday, that had pictures of wolves on them?
(4) The Napolean Dynamite Hypothesis: the Wolf is simply a classic piece of anachronistic, postmodern irony, like "Virginia is For Lovers" shirts or a fascination with unicorns. We laugh at it when we see a teenager who's "into" wolves, though we're not sure why it's actually funny. (why shouldn't he be?)
(5) Finally, perhaps the Wolf is simply part of a movement to nostalgaically reclaim a bit of childhood, a 20something reinterpretation of fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs -- the Wolf is threatening, but also speaks of familiarity and family, and as such these bands might be seen as looking backward at their own sense of wonder in childhood.

Whichever one it is, I still think "Steaming Wolf P-nis*" is a fairly awful name for a band.
(*Self-censored. I don't want errant Google searches to mess with this site.)