Roundup: A ragtag collection of videos and songs from the last seven days

As often happens, Friday has come around and there's a ton of new music that didn't quite warrant its own blog post this week, but which doesn't deserve being consigned to the dumper either.

So here, basically, are six tracks I don't hate.

1) Madeon - Pop Culture (live mashup)

This is mind-boggling. French DJ Madeon creates an entirely new song out of bits of 39 other songs. Oh, and he does it live, playing the samples in off a 64-button Novation Sample Pad. There are bits of Kylie, Jacko, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Daft Punk in there... Astonishing work.

2) Pixie Lott - All About Tonight

Multimedia teen brand Pixie Lott is back with a new single All About Tonight, which roughly translates as *yawn* All About Going To The Club. (I keep meaning to ask - why is there only one club?). This isn't the barnstorming comeback Pixie needed to reinvigorate her see-saw chart career... but it's better than, say, anything Jason Derulo has ever written. And by 'written', I of course mean 'stolen'.

The video is mainly notable for the hilarious legs akimbo dance routine (see above). Pixie Lott has long legs, in case wall-to-wall tabloid coverage had failed to make you aware of this fact.

3) Sufjan Stevens - Get Real, Get Right

*6 Music face* Sufjan Stevens is a hugely talented artist given to massive bouts of creativity and self-indulgence. His new album, The Age Of Adz, contains delicate moments of ephemeral beauty and a bunch of songs that waffle on for 10 minutes about absolutely fuck all. This is one of the former - and it comes with a mesmerising stop-motion video, which Sufjan directed all on his own, despite previously suffering a nervous breakdown during Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr Fox.

4) DJ Earworm - Party On The Floor

Another one of DJ Earworm's semi-annual mash-ups for Capital FM. He's kind of hamstrung by the alarming lack of decent pop music this year, but the juxtaposition of LMFAO and Katy B is sublime.

5) Niki And The Dove - Gentle Roar

Unbelievably, people are still persisting with the whole "[female name] and the [noun]" concept. Latest off the block are Niki And The Dove, a Swedish duo signed to the ultra-hip Subpop label. Subverting the "Alice And The Cheese Grater" subgenre, they make earthy, pagan click-pop, which sounds like Florence Welch swallowing Radiohead. Very classy.

Gentle Roar by subpop

6) Nicola Roberts being hit on the head with a beach ball

As discovered by the incomparable Robot Pigeon blog, here is Nicola Roberts being hit on the head with a beach ball (scroll through to 2'40"). Nice work, everyone.

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New Sufjan Stevens video

Sufjan Stevens, the mercurial musician who's attempting to write an album for each of the 50 US states, is an odd fish.

His records veer from captivating brilliance (Chicago is so ludicrously beautiful it should be listed as one of the new wonders of the world) to treacherous self-indulgence (the outtakes album with three pointless versions of Chicago completely dilutes the song's delicate magic).

Anyway, he's back with another crazy idea: An orchestral symphony about a motorway - The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, to be precise. A distressingly ugly, 11-mile elevated expressway that cuts through New York like a rusting hacksaw.

Stevens has made a pointless "arty" film of the road (and some shots of people hula hooping for no good reason). This gets played in the background while the musician plays his sumptuous, swelling suite on stage.

The first performance came in November 2007, and won the singer-songwriter the prestigious Brendan Gill Prize for a work of art that successfully captures the sprit of New York City.

A DVD / CD of the show is coming out next month, and a trailer video featuring one of the symphony's interludes has just been posted on Vimeo. The music's interlocking polyrhythms create a hypnotic lullaby that slowly builds into a cacophony of brass. A bit like a rush hour traffic jam.

With hula hoops.


Interlude I — Dream Sequence in Subi Circumnavigation

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Click on these

The sit-com is back from the dead (again) claims the New Yorker. Try telling that to anyone who's sat through Scrubs, Weeds or Two-and-a-half Men recently.

Get your MP3's on:
1) Mr Red Penguin has Mylo and the Arctic Monkeys from last week's Jools Holland
2) Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire sessions over at The Torture Garden
3) Fluxblog have the double-whammy of Girls Aloud's superb new single Biology and the classic Dolly Parton Baby I'm Burning (as they suggest, mix it with the White Stripes "My Doorbell" next time you DJ. It rocks).

Rate Celebrity plastic surgery if you dare.

How Stuff Works have posted an article on Nintendo's revolutionary wireless pointy, clicky, wave-it-about-your-heady game controller. It's mostly guess-work, but quite informative nonetheless.

Finally, Mike "Austin Powers" Myers is directly responsible for 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'. Are there any crimes against comedy he isn't guilty of?

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