How the cops found Ke$ha and some other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of videos and songs I haven't had the time or inclination to write about during the last seven days... This week's cover stars are.

1) Ke$ha - Die Young
A great chorus let down by a "rap" that is the sound of a thousand nails on a thousands blackboards processed by a broken auto-tune box.

I particularly like how, in the narrative of the video, the produce placement results in Ke$ha's downfall. "We made it South of the Border" she texts on her shiny new phone - leading the cops straight to her door. Idiot.




2) The Staves - Dead & Born & Grown
This is the title track of the Staveley sisters' debut album, which is out on Monday. I beseech you to buy it (here's a link) - you'll fall in love with it slowly, but irrevocably, and that's a guarantee.




3) Josh Kumra - Waiting For You
You might not know his name, but you'll recognise the voice from Wretch 32's number one single Don't Go last year. Josh Kumra's solo debut is very much in the Ben Howard / Ed Sheeran sensitive-boy-with-a-guitar "genre" - but the sumptuous backing vocals and insistent drums will win you over despite it all.



4) Two Door Cinema Club - Sun (Alex Metric remix)
With their roots on the Kistuné label, Two Door Cinema Club have always been up for a good old club makeover. Their new single is no exception - Alex Metric takes a rather weedy track and soups it up with scratchy hip-hop loops and laser-blast synths that can only be described as "twiddly".





5) Icona Pop - I Love It (feat Charli XCX)
I'm massively behind the curve here, because Icona Pop have been cropping up on my Twitter feeds and pop alerts for months and I never quite got round to checking them out. What did it take to spark my interest? A computer game...

I Love It, which originally premiered in May, features on the excellent soundtrack to racing game Need For Speed: Most Wanted, produced down in Guildford by Criterion Games (creators of the Burnout series, for racing fans). It sounds INCREDIBLE in surround sound, as does the woofer-straining Killsonik remix of Calvin Harris's We'll Be Coming Back.

Sadly, the song isn't out in the UK yet... So you'll have to buy the game if you want to hear it outside the confines of YouTube. My PS3 ID is (somewhat predictably) mrdiscopop if you fancy a race over the weekend.

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