10 songs you may have missed by artists staring moodily out of frame

A semi-regular round-up of songs I haven't quite managed to blog about over the last seven days. There are some exceptional tracks in this week's list, so if you're pushed for time concentrate on the first four and number 10.

1) One Direction - Fireproof
Oh my God, they've all gone Barlow.

Trailing their fourth album (it's called Four, giving you a rare glimpse of their shit hot creative process), Fireproof is a MOR guitar-led ballad that's guaranteed to make the Radio 2 mums swoon. Better than it sounds.



2) Damien Rice - My Favourite Faded Fantasy
"Sometimes you have to step away from what you love in order to learn how to love it again," says Damien Rice, announcing his return after an eight-year hiatus.

Not much has changed in the interim - this Rick Rubin-produced track is acoustic rock with an undercurrent of menace - but that stunning voice is always welcome back onto the Discopop Towers' ghettoblaster.

Damien Rice - My Favourite Faded Fantasy



3) Sinkane - How We Be
Coming soon from DFA Records, this has been on heavy rotation in the 6 Music playlist for a couple of weeks, but the official stream only popped up in the last few days.

Sinkane is a London-born, Sudanese-descended, New York-based musician, who's appeared on the liner notes for indie bands like Of Montreal and Yeasayer. But his solo material is altogether more funky - especially this track, which combines the languid grooves of Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack and a chiming Casio keyboard riff. Addictive.




4) Sam Smith ft A$AP Rocky - I'm Not The Only One
A simple remix, but an incredibly effective one.






5) Nick Gardner - Lose You
Right, so Nick Gardner is a new solo artist from Manchester who was snapped up by US record label Interscope (Gaga, Dr Dre, Lana Del Rey) on the strength of his YouTube covers.

That's hardly exceptional these days. But Nick seems to have pretty diverse tastes - having covered both The Smiths and Kelly Clarkson alongside the obligatory (inferior) version of Adele's Someone Like You.

Some of that filters into his songwriting, although this "buzz track" sounds a lot like his critic-proof labelmates Maroon 5 - who he just happens to be supporting on the UK leg of their tour. One to watch, if only for the intriguing echoes of Phil Collins in the intro.







6) SBTRKT ft Raury - Higher
The third track to appear from SBTRKT's forthcoming album Wonder When We Land isn't a patch on the epic Ezra Koenig collaboration New Dorp, New York - but the woozy, four in the morning paranoia of Higher is still an solid 7/10.

It features Raury, a young MC from Atlanta who only released his first mixtape a month ago. The music industry moves fast these days, huh?

7) La Roux - Kiss and Not Tell
Fun fact: If you call the Welsh phone number in La Roux's new video (see above), you can listen to her new single on your phone, just like we used to in the 1980s when British Telecom had a number you could dial to hear the Top 10 and subsequently be grounded because it cost £1 a minute, which was more than the cost of a 7" single making the whole endeavour redundant in the first place.

NB: The La Roux song isn't much cop.





8) Kleerup ft Susanne Sundfør - Let Me In
If you always felt Abba's Visitors album deserved a sequel, this song should help. Kleerup you should know from their frequent collaborations with Robyn; while Susanne Sundfør is "known" for her guest vocals on songs by M83 and Royksopp.






9) Kiesza - Giant In My Heart (live lounge)
Honestly, this is just worth it to see the keyboard player trying his hardest to recreate the "waow-doop-do-do-do-do-daow" hook. Bless his heart.





10) Seinabo Sey - Pistols At Dawn
Born in Gambia but living in Sweden, Seinabo Sey is one of my favourite new artists of the year. While every other soul singer thinks "dark" means "a bit upset", she goes in for the full-throated Nina Simone melodrama.

Her new single, Pistols at Dawn, is more restrained than the hard-hitting Hard Times, but there's a hint of menace bubbling just under the surface.

"Stand down or showdown, baby. Let’s get this done," she commands her lover, who has no doubt just wet his pants.

And that's your lot... Til next time, then!

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John Mayer covers Beyonce's XO and 10 other songs you may have missed

This is the bit where I round up all the songs I didn't have time to write about over the last week (and it's been a busy week - with trips to Leeds and Bradford and Manchester - so I didn't have time to write about much).

So, without any further ado, our cover stars are...

1) John Mayer - XO
XO is the most songy song on Beyonce's Beyonce, so this strummed acoustic cover was guaranteed to work from the off. Beautifully understated, with none of the bombastic grandstanding of the original.





2) Sam Smith (or is it?) - Stay With Me
My erstwhile colleague, Radio 1's Sinead Garvan, had a shocker while interviewing Sam Smith at Radio 1's Big Weekend last week. If you haven't seen it already - here's the video. Sam's face is priceless.


Maybe that's why he's smiling from ear-to-ear when he takes to the stage. Or maybe it's the incredible reaction. Either way, it's a lovely, inclusive performance.




3) Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud (Live on Later...)
"Playing a brand new never before heard song on jools tonight," tweeted Ed Sheeran last Friday. "It's my favourite track on the album."

It's easy to see why. This is a superbly-crafted, heart-on-sleeve love song. The sort of thing you'd have expected from Tracy Chapman or Paul McCartney at the peak of their powers.

Yes, it's really that good. Even Jools's boogie-woogie piano can't ruin it.





4) Broods - Bridges

Not-entirely-unattractive pop duo Broods (see above) first released this single as a free download in 2013. But now that the New Zealanders have got a "proper" record deal in the States, the song's been given an expensively hazy Instagram-style video.

Shot around the Castaic Lake in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, it's a perfect fit for the song's moody electronic swoosh.




5) La Roux - Uptight Downtown
So, basically, the La Roux song that came out a fortnight ago was a "hey, we're back" kind of thing and this is the proper single that you'll hear on your radiogram this summer.

As many people have already noted, it sounds a lot like David Bowie's Let's Dance. But while Bowie was all "heyyy, let's party," Ellie Jackson is having really deep thoughts about her generation and stuff.

"It's kind of very loosely based on the London Riots," she told Triple J radio. "I grew up in Brixton where the first riots happened... It was interesting to see people of my generation try to at least get up and stand up for what they believed in.

"I think it's just the energy people would have liked to have seen from those riots and I kind of tried to turn a negative into a positive."







6) Foster The People - Best Friend
Foster The People's second album, Supermodel, hasn't exactly set the charts on fire in the UK, but they made the Top 10 in the US. Which is good news, because it means the band keep getting to make their excellent videos.

Directors Ben and Alex Brewer helm the latest clip, which takes a B-Movie look at fashion week. The models may be stick thin, but they have a voracious appetite... FOR HUMAN FLESH!





7) Miguel - Simplethings
Displaying the expert timing of a blacmange, Miguel has just released a video for a song he debuted in January.

But we can forgive his tardiness when the song, originally featured in Series 3 of Lena Dunham's Girls, is so gorgeous. "Laugh with me baby," he croons over an indistinct, sawtooth bassline, "I just want the simple things."





8) Katy Perry - Dark Horse (live at Radio 1's Big Weekend)
What does she sphinx she's playing at, etcetera...




9) The Pierces - Kings

The Pierces' new album, Creation, has just been given a highly-justified four-star review in Q Magazine, while the lead single, Kings, is on Radio 2's A-list... So things are looking up for the Alabama sisters.

The video, shot in the Los Angeles desert, has a tribal theme with Allison and Catherine slapping on the warpaint and going to battle. But this is no Braveheart - no-one's head gets chopped off and everyone stops fighting at sundown to have a nice bonfire.



10) Lana Del Rey - Shades of Cool
A little teaser for Lana's Ultraviolence album, which arrives in a fortnight.

All twangy steel guitars and brushed drums it shows more clearly than West Coast how she's moved away from the trip-hop trappings of her debut. The mid-point guitar solo (!) is hair-raising.



11) Prince - The Breakdown (teaser)
I finally got to see Prince play one of his Hit and Run shows in Leeds last week - and was utterly blown away. Thanks to his muscular, compact new band 3rdEyeGirl, he's ditched the Vegas vamp that's characterised his live shows since the Musicology tour ten years ago.

"If you haven't noticed there's been a turn towards the guitar these days," he said, as his fingers blurred over the neck of his Telecaster. He even nabbed Ida Nielsen's bass for an impromptu bass solo during a rendition of Alphabet Street - just one of half-a-dozen songs I've never heard him play before (I nearly died when he played the opening chords to Sometimes It Snows In April).

My official review is on the BBC site, and here's the peerless setlist. Surprisingly, one of the highlights was his newest song, The Breakdown.

Still no word on a UK release, but the song just got a teaser video on the 3rdEyeGirl Youtube channel.

And that's a wrap. Have a great weekend!

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Jurassic 5 return and nine other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of notable new music, presented in a handy list format that will crash your browser due to the sheer volume of YouTube widgets. Yes, it's time for another edition of "songs you may have missed".

1) Jurassic 5 - The Way We Do It
Jurassic 5 are truly the Kate Bushes of hip-hop. It's been eight years since their last album, Feedback, and their "comeback" single is so old it was produced by Heavy D - who died in 2011.

Still - what a single. Sampling The White Stripes My Doorbell, it's jellybean waterfall of witty old-school rhymes.




2) La Roux - Let Me Down Gently
I wrote about this brooding, sax-o-phonic pop behemoth last week, and now it has a video accompaniment.

Watch! Ellie sitting upon a chair.
Marvel! As she runs across a misty moor.
Gasp! As next to nothing occurs.




3) Sam Smith - Leave Your Lover
When I interviewed Sam Smith earlier this year, he told me he wanted "to write an album about unrequited love" for people who were lonely. He'd even recorded a song "about being in love with someone who is married. I want people in those positions to have something to listen to - because I've been in that position too."

I'm going to guess this was that song.




4) Tove Styrke - Even If I'm Loud It Doesn't Mean I'm Talking To You
A coiled spring of energy, this bouncy, ballsy track from Stockholm's Tove Styrke could be a whole new genre: Thrash Pop.

For fans of Robyn's Konichiwa Bitches; Icona Pop's I Love It and the Dixie Cups Iko-Iko.





5) Kelis - Friday Fish Fry (Live on Later)
There's a pleasing unpredictability to the songs on Kelis's new album, Food. Sure, they all start out as tributes to the classic soul of Otis and Aretha, but Dave Sitek's production teases out the weird and the off-kilter to put a new spin on old sounds.

Case in point: The "Ice Cold Water" chant in the middle of Friday Fish Fry, which seems to have been beamed in from Blue Swede's Hooked On A Feeling. It shouldn't work, but it works.




6) Seinabo Sey - Hard Times
Recently signed to Universal Music, Sweden's Seinabo Sey showcases her stunning voice in this staccato soul single.

The melody is as simple and repetitive as a playground chant, but the tribal backing vocals and volcanic percussion will stop you in your tracks.






7) Jungle - Time
Hot damn, this is funky.




8) Sinead Harnett - No Other Way (ft Snakehips)
You may know Sinead Harnett from her collaborations with Rudimental - and if you've seen them on tour, you've almost certainly marvelled at her vocals. But now she's cast off from their safe harbours and set sail in search of her own musical treasure [sorry - tortured metaphor ed].

You might be surprised at the results: Sinead's debut EP is more akin to the smooth soul of Jessie Ware than Rudimental's helter skelter dance vibes.




9) Alistair Griffin featuring Kimberley Walsh - The Road
This is the official song of Yorkshire's Grand Depart - aka the first stage of this year's of the Tour De France. Apparently individual legs of cycling events need their own "anthem" now, after somebody incorrectly decided that Queen's Bicycle Race wasn't good enough.

Still, it's nice to hear Kimberly get a chance to stretch her vocal cords, and this uplifting, empowering power ballad could have been a lot worse.



10) Jetta - Crescendo
My idle observation that Pharrell Williams has a "magic formula" for writing intros seems to have gone viral this week, after being picked upon Gawker and a couple of other US sites.

Right on cue, then, here's Paloma Faith's former backing singer Jetta with a spritely, chart-bound, Pharrell-produced new single.

Guess how it starts?

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La Roux return: The internet has its say

It has been five years - FIVE YEARS - since La Roux last released a new record. Even Michael Jackson has managed two albums in the intervening period and, last time I checked, he was dead.

But the self-imposed hiatus ended last night, when the band put out a new single*, Let Me Down Gently. "Let me in for a minute / You're not my life but I want you in it," sings Ellie over a sparse, sustained organ chord. Then, after a slow burning two-and-a-half-minute intro, a dramatic pause ushers in a second half full of undulating synths and a strangled saxophone solo.

It's all beautifully produced, and (almost) worth the wait. But does La Roux still have a fanbase after all this time?

I had a look on Twitter for reactions to the song, but almost every post was a music blog saying "La Roux are back" (natch). The rest of the comments fell into one of five distinct categories:

1) The delighted

That was so worth the wait. @larouxofficial you beauty.

— Gorjan Markovski (@Doobydum) May 13, 2014

2) The disdainful

Who authorised the return of La Roux? This is awful. What next, new material from The Ting Tings? An arena tour from Natasha Bedingfield?

— IncrediblyRich (@IncrediblyRich) May 13, 2014

3) The analytical

That is quite a ruddy big gap in the new La Roux song isn't it. pic.twitter.com/n0GBuK4tzb

— Stefan (@stefanatical) May 13, 2014

4) The confused

‘La Roux is back’ or ‘La Roux are back’? I’ve seen both.

— Sentric Music (@SentricMusic) May 13, 2014

5) The French

#música @LaRouxOfficial regala su impecable #LetMeDownGently al reservar su esperado nuevo álbum http://t.co/pX38VT9G46

— Chueca (@chueca_com) May 13, 2014

Whichever camp you fall into, the song is available on iTunes today - with a new album Trouble In Paradise (nine tracks, suggesting a work rate of one song every seven months) on its way in July.

And here it is. Well done if you scrolled this far.

La Roux - Let Me Down Gently

* Update: Apparently it's not a single but a "taster track" whatever that means.

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Top 10 albums of 2009

Hello again!

Hope you had a great Christmas and new year. There's been plenty of new music round here at Discopop Towers, but that can wait til next week. Until then, here's our summary of the best 10 records of the last 12 months. 2009 wasn't a vintage year, to be perfectlly honest. But the top 3 make up for all of that.


1) Florence and the Machine - Lungs

Like all the best records, this is a slow-burner. For me, the epiphany came the first time I played the CD over real speakers, and Florence's epic, gothic drums punched me right in the heart. There's plenty to admire here: Attitude as firey as the 23-year-old's big red barnet, shockingly visceral lyrics, and, on Kiss With A Fist, a healthy obsession with the White Stripes' Hotel Yorba. Ironically for an album called Lungs, it will take your breath away.

2) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz

Everyone says this is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' disco album, but that does it a grave disservice. It's Blitz isn't about the carefree hedonism of Sister Sledge - it's about a seedy night out at the wrong end of town, ripped stockings, smudged mascara and all. Singles Zero and Heads Will Roll snog your face off on the dancefloor, while Dull Life breaks out the guitars for a brief opportunity to mosh or pogo or any of the other grandiose terms you use to describe "jumping up and down". The end of the record captures the comedown, too, with Runaway and Hysteric the perfect soundtrack to the guilty regret of a rainy Sunday morning. If you can stand Karen O's voice through the hangover, that is.

3) A Camp Colonia

A cheery record about rape, pillage, divorce and war in the Belgian Congo. The work of former Cardigan Nina Persson, her husband Nathan Larson and Atomic Swing's Niclas Frisk, Colonia was inspired by 60s girl-pop and the works of Adam Ant. Brilliantly, it manages to sound nothing like either of them. Instead, it's a sumptuous, orchestral, alt-rock album, encompassing bittersweet ballads (Stronger Than Jesus), regal waltzes (The Crowning) and glam rock stomps (My America). A towering achievement.

4) Temper Trap - Conditions

For my money, the only decent guitar album of the year. Aussie quartet Temper Trap are essentially Coldplay with a decent rhythm section. That means (a) their songs aren't hopelessly twee and (b) they occasionally have songs you would consider dancing to. Both of these are good things, of course, especially when combined with haunting falsetto vocals and chiming, spacious guitar lines. I wish I'd written more about them over the last 12 months, to be honest.

5) Lady GaGa - The Fame / Fame Monster

In 2009, the best singles, the most deranged outfits, the stupidest videos, the unlikeliest rumour, the most ridiculously censor-baiting awards performance, the highest heels, the tallest piano, and the best overarching artistic-visual concept all belonged to New York's Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Sadly, her album was a bit hit and miss after all that - but there's a great 10-track "The Fame - Redux" playlist on my iPod, ready to be depolyed any time I fancied a 40-minute dose of demonic space age artnoise. The addition of Bad Romance and Alejandro from The Fame Monster created the year's most note-perfect pop record. It's all in the quality control.

6) Passion Pit - Manners

Yes, the lead singer bears a resemblance to Rory McGrath (look him up) and yes, they rely a little too often on the kids' choir from the Sesame Street theme tune - but this record is one big bundle of happy, poppy fun. Sadly, you're more likely to have heard Passion Pit's colourful electronica on advertisements than on the radio, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out.

7) Regina Spektor - Far

Like a lot of fans, I was initially disappointed with Regina's follow-up to Begin To Hope. The Jeff Lynne-produced tracks, in paticular, lackied the fanged bite of her earlier, spikier songs. Once I got over the lack of yelping and lo-fi tin shack recordings, however, there was a rewarding, multi-textured album waiting to be discovered. Laughing With has a beautifully observed lyric about how athiests suddenly start praying when things go wrong. The hip-hop tinged Dance Athem Of The 80s is the dippy story of a night "Walking through the city / Like a drunk, but not". In the end, the addition of string sections and radio-friendly production didn't ruin Regina at all - they grounded her eccentric musings in the real world, making this album all the more potent.

8) Little Boots - Hands

Little Boots has a tendency to let a creative writing exercise get in the way of a decent lyric - shoe-horning references to Fibonacci and Pythagoras into the pun-o-rific Mathematics, for example. On the other hand, New In Town - Amazing; Earthquake - Amazing; Meddle - Amazing; No Brakes - A-ma-zing; Remedy - Amazing x5,000,000; Stuck On Repeat - Amazing^{10000000000000000}.
In summary, then: Not bad.

9) La Roux - La Roux

Elly Jackson's voice is so shrill they use it to cut diamonds. Ben Langmaid's synthesizer has two sound settings "80s synth" and "80s steel drum". Yet, together, they made an album of surprising depth and emotional power. Jackson's expressions of heartbreak and emotional fragility gave the dayglo pop some much needed light and shade - particularly on the weepy bedsheet ballad Cover My Eyes. Yes, the 12 tracks kind of blended into one another - but sometimes, just sometimes, a pop album should sound homogenous. Otherwise, it could be any old vocalist belting out any old nonsense over a faceless producer's meaningless beats (we're looking at you, The Saturdays).

10) Nelly Furtado - Mi Plan

Because Nelly Furtado makes better Spanish albums than Shakira does English ones.

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Top 10 Singles Of The Year

It's getting harder and harder to tell whether a song is actually a single any more. Now that the certainty of seeing an actual CD sitting on a shelf is gone, so many songs I thought were singles turn out to have been radio only, or buzz tracks, or whatever. But I'm pretty sure all of the following records featured on some record company spreadsheet as "the single" for a particular artist's campaign.

As usual, the top 10 is compiled from iTunes play counts, weighted for release date, so that I can't cheat and suddenly pretend to have been listening to Animal Collective all along. Because I didn't.

1) Marina & The Diamonds - I Am Not A Robot

I fell in love with this the instant the digitised backing vocals kicked in. As I suspect will become a theme with Marina when we hear her full album next year, it is all about self-expression and being true to your id. And, as long as Miss Diamandis' inner demons are producing exquisite alt-pop ballads like this, I'm all for it.

2)Girls Aloud - Untouchable

Gone, but not really gone, but not forgotten, either.

3) La Roux - Bulletproof

Who'd have thunk it? Little Elly Jackson is probably the year's least likely pop star - wan, awkward, and brittle - but she turned out the biggest, killingest hook of them all. The synths envelop her delicate voice like a suit of armour as, lyrically, she builds a wall around her broken heart. That's metaphor, right there.

4) Cheryl Cole - Fight For This Love

I didn't expect this to be so high up the chart, but it turns out I quite liked it, after all. The textbook definition of a grower, it was totally unremarkable but strangely memorable ALL AT THE SAME TIME. How do they do that, etc?

5) A Camp - Stronger Than Jesus

This is a very female-heavy top 10, isn't it? Well, at least there's a change of pace with this song from Swedish misery-chops Nina Persson and her cohorts. My favourite lyrics of the year, too, dismissing love as "the poison hidden in a bon bon". Maybe she should try a different sweet shop.

6) Florence & The Machine - Drumming Song

Everyone else will surely go for Rabbit Heart as the defining Florence song of the year, but as a dyed-in-the-wool percussionist, this is the one that did it for me. I have ruined precisely 42 journeys to work for the passengers of London's E2 bus by banging out the limb-entangling drum line of this song on the railings. And I do not apologise for a single second.

7) Empire Of The Sun - Walking On A Dream

No-one ever knows what I'm talking about when I mention this track, forcing me to sing "we are always running for the thrill of it, thrill of it", at which point they say "oh, yes that song. I thought it was by MGMT". Well, it's not.

8) Jay-Z - Empire State Of Mind

To be fair, Jay-Z could have delivered a Ronnie Corbett monologue over this backing track and I'd still have bought it. Compare the syncopated, pounding piano line to the watery guff that leaks all over Alicia Keys' original and you will see why the Jiggaman (I love typing that) is still at the top of his game after 20 years. At the same time, reading out a New York tourism information leaflet and calling it lyrics is actually a step below the Ronnie Corbett thing.

9) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll

In which Karen O finds a dancefloor, puts her handbag down, and embarks upon a ir-tossing, foot-stomping, necklace shredding dances that is both utter genius and the sort of thing that would get you arrested in Gdansk.

10) The Veronicas - Untouched

This is the result of an unhealthy three-week obsession with The Veronicas album sampler in March, which evaporated like Ribena in a kiln as soon as the full album was released. There is a great (and probably unintentional) lyrical sleight of hand in this song - when Lisa and Jess sing 30 seconds of utter gibberish ("I go 'oooh oooh', you go 'aah ahh', alalala alalala") and then flip it around with "right now you're the only thing that's making any sense to me". Smashing.


PS: I'm as surprised as you by the absence of Lady GaGa from this list. She actually tied with herself for 11th place (Poker Face and Bad Romance got the same score once I'd done all the MATHS), but The Veronicas just pipped her to the post. Unless you discount them for originally releasing their single in 2007. Which I don't.

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Don't look now - it's La Roux

The video for La Roux's new single, I'm Not Your Toy, is full of people looking askance, askew and sideways. It's got to mean something - but what?













The song's lyrics deal with mistrust (and lack of self-confidence) in a relationship. Elly doesn't trust her partner when he says he loves her. "You don't like me, you just want the attention," she warbles.

So could the "wandering eyes" of the video represent Elly's lover, a man who is constantly on the lookout for the fireworks of his next big romance? Or were they simply trying to avoid this guy?



Decide for yourselves. The video is here:

La Roux - I'm Not Your Toy

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La Roux video premiere (link)

Let's face it, everyone was taken by surprise by the success of "Danny" La Roux's In For The Kill. It was a good surprise, like finding out your Easter Egg is made of solid chocolate, but a surprise nonetheless.

Anyway, those legions of new fans will be pleased to hear that:
a) New single Bulletproof is even better than the first one
b) The whole album is pretty frickin' marvellous

The problem with the whole La Roux "package", however, is that Elly Jackson doesn't really do anything. She's a bit awkward, a bit shy, and she just happens to make psychotically catchy rat-tat-tat electro pop records.

The question is, how do you sidestep this when it comes to making a promo video?

Easy: Put Elly on a treadmill (walking makes you look like you have drive and purpose) and CGI in some backgrounds you nicked from Tron (because its all, like, the 1980s, isn't it?)

The end result is a bit like a dystopian cyber-vision of Peter Kay's Show Me The Way To Amarillo... with added blusher.



Whether that's a good thing or not is entirely up to you.

You can watch the full thing on the Newsbeat website.

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Is the pop revival going to happen?

If we're to believe the pundits, electro-pop is going to be the big thing in 2009. Roisin Murphy must be hopping mad. Goldfrapp have thrown away their lutes. Kylie is thinking "maybe someone will buy my records again".

Personally, I remain to be convinced. A lot of the hotly-tipped artists are making anaemic, tinny synth pop with incredibly slight melodies. Imagine a weedier version of Hot Chip, and you're in the right ballpark (nb: these artists would not be seen in a ballpark as it would "play havoc with their allergies").

Here are three of the aforementioned hot tips. They're definitely cool, I'll almost certainly load them onto my iPod, but I just can't see them in the top 10. What do you reckon?


La Roux - In For The Kill

La Roux is Elly Jackson and co-writer and co-producer Ben Langmaid

Elly has a trendy haircut

On second thoughts, it's a terrible haircut

We're not in France, you know.
Official website

Cocknbull Kid - I'm Not Sorry

Cocknbull Kid is 22-year-old Anita Blay

She's "the lovechild of Morissey and Neneh Cherry" (Nenissey??)

She DJ'd at the Sugababes album launch, which was terrible
Official website

Ladytron - Tomorrow

This lot have been around for a decade

If they can't have a hit, why should any of these other bands?

But we still like Little Boots
Official website

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