Cheryl gets remixed and 10 other songs you may have missed

A round-up of the songs that slipped through the cracks over the last seven days. This week's selection starts right here.

1) Cheryl Cole - Crazy Stupid Love (Handbag House bootleg)
Scottish remixer Iain Macleod, aka Handbag House, was impressively quick off the mark with this one, uploading his remix of Cheryl's comeback single about 15 hours after it got it's first radio play. He hasn't done a bad job, either.

The image at the top of the page, by the way, is from Cheryl's video shoot earlier this week. The promo is due to "hit the streets" (be uploaded by a record label intern) on Monday.




2) Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence
The Ellie Goulding to Kimye's Wills & Kate, here's Lana Del Rey with the title track to her second album. The usual adjectives apply: haunting, gauzy, hazy, woozy, ethereal, dreamy, etc, etc.





3) OneRepublic - Love Runs Out
"Love Runs Out was originally going to be the first single on our album but I couldn't crack the chorus" Ryan Tedder told me earlier this year. "It gutted me because I had it marked on the board as 'first single' for six months."

It's a good thing he kept working on it, as it would have been a shame to lose this gospel-pop gem.

"I'll be your light, your match, your burning sun," he sings over an insistent piano rhythm, that harks back to Moby's Bessie Wright sampling hit Honey.

4) Ella Eyre - If I Go
Ella's trying out the old Lionel Richie "Dancing On The Ceiling" trick for this video - but she's overlooked one crucial detail. While Lionel had a tightly controlled afro, her shaggy lion's mane always falls in the direction of gravity, giving away the secret of the optical illusion (it's a rotating box).

Amazing song, though. What. A. Voice.




5) Klaxons - Show Me A Miracle
A cross between an ITV Chart Show ident and one of those internet cat videos. In other words, awesome.





6) Sam Smith ft Mary J Blige - Stay With Me
There's a mutual love affair going on here. "Working with Mary J. Blige is one of the biggest highlights of my career so far," said Sam Smith after recording this live band duet.

"I remember holding her album in my hands in the car when I was a young boy. To meet your idols is a magical thing, but to work with them is truly a dream come true."

Blige was no less gushing, saying: "Sam's true soulful voice is the first of this kind I have heard since Luther Vandross, Freddie Jackson and all great soul male voices."

Oh, Get a room, you two.




7) Banks - Drowning
Banks sings her latest ballbreaking R&B ballad in a room full of mirrors. No wonder she's got a tortured mind - it must be a nightmare cleaning off all the fingerprints.

8) Kylie - Sexy Love
I can't really recommend the song, which is so bland and generic it might as well be a Tesco own-brand Rich Tea biscuit. But the video features Kylie doing the hoovering, and you can't argue with that.





9) Jack White - Lazaretto
The blues in black and white.




10) Neon Jungle - Louder
With two bona-fide top 10 hits under their belts, Girlband-with-attitude Neon Jungle have taken the shock decision to release a ballad. "It's still got energy and power," they insist, "but in a more subtle way".




11) The Ting Tings - Wrong Club
No, wait... Come back. This is a return to form, although it never reaches the heady heights of Great DJ or That's Not My Name.

As Fraser McAlpine noted on Twitter, they're up all night to get Lucky-y.

And that's it for another week... Stay tuned for more on Monday.

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Can someone sound the Klaxons' klaxon?

Like the Nintendo Wii and Kevin Federline, The Klaxons were big news in 2006, after which they apparently hitched a one-way ride to dumperville.

Fans of "new rave" will be pleased to hear, though, that The Klaxons are staging a rather convincing comeback. The ground was laid last summer, with this bleep-tastic remix of MKS's Flatlines:



Their own new material started to appear in March, led by the dreamy, Gorgon City-produced There Is No Other Time. It "peaked" at number 42 in the charts, which is worse than it deserved. Maybe a guest verse from Pitbull or Jason Derulo would have helped.


Undeterred, the band are back for another crack at the top 40, this time with Show Me A Miracle, which singer Jamie Reynolds calls a naive response" to dance music.

"We were listening to a lot of Bauer and a lot of R&B and hip-hop," he told Zane Lowe, "genres we've never tried to make before. We just got together around a table and started trying to replicate it."

Have they succeeded? Not really. This still sounds exactly like a Klaxons record. But a very good Klaxons record, nonetheless.


The Klaxons' third album Love Frequency will be released on 2 June, with production from Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers, Erol Alkan, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and more. So there you go.

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Katy Perry's birthday suit and seven other songs you may have missed

This week's groundbreaking installment of songs-you-may-have-missed contains several songs you may have missed. It's a revolution.

1) Katy Perry - Birthday (lyric video)
La Perry's lyric videos have a bigger budget than most artists get for their actual promos. And what does Katy do with all that extra cash? Spends it on cake. Amazing.




2) Calvin Harris - Summer
Calvin Harris has also been handed a sizeable promo budget, but he's spent it all on bikini girls and sports cars. Watch out, Harris, or you'll turn into Jamiroquai.




3) Jamie xx - Sleep Sound
Now, this is more like it: A dance video, starring 13 members of the Manchester Deaf Centre, set to a hypnotic new song by Jamie xx.

Director Sofia Mattioli says the video was inspired by a train journey: "I was listening to music, getting deep into it, and this girl started staring at me. After a while I took my headphones off and she came up to me, started signing and then wrote me a note to say that she was deaf but could almost feel the music by my movement."

Captivating and mesmerising.



4) Say Lou Lou - Everything We Touch (Yannis Foals mix)
Sexy, euphoric, Swedish pop. There's something special about Say Lou Lou and Yannis Philippakis from "intellectual" rock band Foals clearly agrees.

He's run his feather duster all over their new single Everything We Touch and given it a sparkling, heavenly sheen. Damned-near perfect.




5) Tove Lo - Stay High (Hippie Sabotage remix)
I prefer the original version of Tove Lo's Habits but Radio One have playlisted this trancey remix for complicated music 'biz' reasons we'll never fully understand. On the downside, the remix has bumped the superior Love Ballad off her Truth Serum EP (otherwise it wouldn't be chart eligible in the UK). On the plus side, Tove is now number seven in the iTunes chart.

A remix video has been hastily cobbled together and looks like this.


NB - my interview with Tove went up on the BBC News site today. You can read it here.


6) Foxes - Holding On To Heaven
Foxes is gradually turning into a genuine pop star. Photogenic, witty, fond of tempo changes, with a constant hint of melancholy in her voice.

Holding On To Heaven follows up the top 10 hits Youth and Let Go For Tonight (although it's also been a free download in the past which is very confusing). Taken from her forthcoming album Glorious, it's power ballad o'clock.



7) Nightbox - Burning
"Hi Mark, I'm Andrew Keyes, the bassist in Nightbox," said an email in my inbox earlier this week. "I'd appreciate if you'd lend me your ears for a moment to check out my band's upcoming release."

After a complex and painful surgical procedure, I did lend Andrew my ears and, contrary to expectations the "upcoming release" was 100% not shit.

Recorded in the band's living room ("we've got wooden floors", says Andrew, "far easier to clean up") but given the once over by MSTRKRFT and Sebastien Grainger of DFA 1979, their EP is propulsive, rhythmic indiepop.

The EP's out on 22 April, with Burning as the lead track - but you can check out their other material on Soundcloud.



8) Klaxons - There Is No Other Time
A return to form if ever there was one.

That's your lot. There's also a Kylie lyric video doing the rounds, but I couldn't think of anything to say about it.

See you again on Monday when apparently there'll be a new Lana Del Rey single to discuss. Exciting.

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Back in business: What did I miss?

HELLO THERE EVERYONE!

As you can see, I'm back from the Caribbean - where the sun was shiny, the sea was wavy, and the music was Corinne Bailey Rae-y (seriously, there seems to be a law requiring all bands to play Put Your Records On at least twice during their set).

I missed the Grammys and I missed the Super Bowl - but I did manage to catch Prince's appearance on New Girl, where he proved his acting "chops" hadn't improved since Under The Cherry Moon *frowny face emoticon*.


We've only just got back to the UK, so I haven't had time to catch up on all the exciting Conor Maynard and Laura Mvula announcements clogging up my inbox, but here's a quick rundown of the videos I've prioritised to watch on YouTube tonight.

1) Kylie Minogue - Into The Blue
Controversially shot in 4:3, aspect ratio fans.




2) Rudimental ft Becky Hill - Powerless
Becky Hill was on the first series of The Voice, you know.




3) Shakira ft Rihanna - Can't Remember To Forget You
The song doesn't get any better but [insert sexist comment about Shakira's bottom here].




4) Foster The People - Coming Of Age
It's like a three-minute John Hughes movie, only with new music on top. What sophistry is this?




5) Villagers - Occupy Your Mind
Recorded with James Ford (Klaxons, Arctic Monkeys) this song was premiered last week as a gesture of solidarity with Russia's gay population ahead of the Winter Olympics.




6) St Vincent - Digital Witness
Still disorientating, still brilliant.




7) 5 Seconds of Silence - She Looks So Perfect
It's like McBusted split up, fell down a rabbit hole, landed in Australia 10 years younger and started all over again.




8) Klaxons - There Is No Other Time
"A return to form" - every music journalist, everywhere.




9) MØ - Don't Wanna Dance
Who doesn't love a music video set in a scrap yard? Nobody, that's who.



10) The Pierces - Kings
If Tim Burton drew a girl group it would look like Allison and Catherine Pierce. Later this year, they'll be following up 2010's achingly beautiful goth-pop album You & I... and this is the first bite of their newly-plucked forbidden fruit. Yummy.


11) Prince - PretzelBodyLogic (preview)
Apparently he's playing Shepherd's Bush again tonight (Monday)... Anyone care to confirm?

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An outbreak of common sense

There's a strange thing happening in the music industry at the minute - bands are scrapping complete albums with the acquiesence of their record companies.

Off the top of my head the list includes The Scissor Sisters, Eminem, Massive Attack, Daisy Dares You and The Hoosiers. Both the Scissors and the Hoosiers have gone on the record as saying they abandoned the finished tracks with the full support of their label, who could have made a quick buck by releasing the existing material (and who would have to fund further studio sessions).

Nu-rave pioneers The Klaxons could claim to have started the trend, having taken three years to follow up their award-winning debut, Myths Of The Near Future. The fly in the ointment is that they were actually instructed to re-record the album after turning in a "dense, psychedelic" (ie rubbish) master tape.

This has all turned out for the best, as the band's new single Echoes is really rather good indeed. Built on the solid foundations of Golden Skans, it kicks off with 15 seconds of feedback before blasting into space with a kinetic, piano-driven riff.

The lyrics are the usual spooky rubbish about other worlds and "the ninth wave" - but The Klaxons also deploy the word "liminal", which the dictionary defines as a sensory threshold. I think this refers to the feeling of being desperate for the loo but having to hold back your wee.

Klaxons - Echoes


Meanwhile: Here's the artwork for The Klaxons new album, Surfing The Void.



Surely this would have been better?

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