Super Mario Material Girl

The Bird and the Bee are an LA-based band with the tendency to produce quirky nuggets of dreampop that are a little bit jazz and a little bit brilliant.

Previous examples of their oeuvre include Love Letter To Japan and F-cking Boyfriend. We first heard them in 2008 on Katy Perry's intro tape, which turned out to be the highlight of Katy Perry's concert. Such is the hand you are dealt in this poker game called pop.

ANYWAY - The Bird and the Bee are 50% Greg Kurstin (Beck, Lily Allen, Kylie, The Wanted) and 50% Inara George (winsome, cool, languid). Quite by accident, they have recorded a bleepy bloopy Super Nintendo Entertainment System chipset version of Madonna's Material Girl. According to Inara: "The reason why we covered this song is not very romantic. Greg thought our publishers had asked him to cover the song... but it turned out that he was mistaken."

And thus I present to you my favourite mistake of all time. Apart from my third daughter*.

Material Girl by thebirdandthebee


There are many more goodies like this on The Bird And The Bee's SoundCloud page and their official website.

* Before you leave angry comments, I don't really have any children. At least, none that I'm prepared to acknowledge without a court-ordered DNA test.

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Stop everything and listen to this

Nerina Pallot, esteemed popsmith and Kylie collaborator, has made a rather good record with Bernard Butler. The lead single is called Put Your Hands Up and it sounds like this.

Nerina Pallot - Put Your Hands Up (preview)


For now, you will have to take my word for it that this snippet merely hints at the magnificence of the entire song. For the sake of clarity, my word is "flabbergast".

In the meantime, here's Nerina playing an acoustic version of Put Your Hands Up.



The single is released on 22nd May. I think it's safe to say I'll be following any developments on the Nerina Pallot front with eagle eyes and owl ears.

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Justice is served

For those of you who thought Daft Punk's Tron soundtrack wasn't Daft Punk-y enough, here are fellow French dance duo Justice to save the day.

Created for an Adidas commercial, their new track Civilization, combines ridiculous prog rock lyrics about the ascent of man, the keyboard riff from The Who's Baba O'Reilly, and a chorus that "pays tribute to" (totally rips off) Daft Punk's Aerodynamic.

Neither progressive nor astonishing, it will almost certainly sound better live.

6/10

Justice - Civilization


The single is due on 4th April, with a full album planned for later this year.

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Jamie Woon will make you swoon

Jo Whiley lowered the curtain on her 18-year tenure on Radio 1 this weekend with a few sniffles, a visit from Dave Grohl and a special song by Dr Karl Kennedy off of Neighbours.

I know a lot of people are sniffy about Jo - usually the sort of person who thinks she "betrayed indie" by presenting a daytime radio show and playing Kylie - but I always found her a sincere, human presence on a station filled with braying gasbags.

The Live Lounge segment was born on Jo's mid-morning programme and it was a fitting tribute that her final weekend featured one of the best performances in a very long time. OK, it didn't quite scale the heights of Leona Lewis's first ever stab at Run, but it certainly erased the memory of Florence and the Machine's screechy, joyless rendition of Halo.

The session came courtesy of Jamie Woon, with his melifluous voice and his interesting facial hair. First up, he played his current single, Lady Luck. Following swiftly afterwards was an acoustic guitar revamp of Adele's Someone Like You (note that he reaches for the high notes in the chorus, which even Adele avoided in her spookily brilliant Brit Awards performance).

Both were smoother than a freshly shaved baby.






So goodbye, Jo Whiley, I will miss you. Except that you'll now be working in the same building as me and I'll probably spill tea all over you in the lift.

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New music: Austra - Lose It

Here's something interesting: A former child opera star launches a pop career, changes her mind, recruits two like-minded musicians, signs record deal, proclaims: "All I ever wanted was to be a gay band."

That's the best potted biography I've seen in months. The singer in question is Canadian chorister Kate Stelmanis, and her new band is called Austra.

Named after the Latvian goddess of light, they're influenced by lungsmiths like Nina Simone, Roy Orbinson and Bjork. They stew those theatrical vocals with black magic and grizzly minor key synths, to create a sticky licorice twist of dancepop. Or, as the record company would have it, "a masterpiece suitable for both ritual incantations and clubs".

Either way, the descriptions aren't doing the music any justice. To quote Depeche Mode: "Words are meaningless. And forgettable." And, to quote Shannon, "Just let the music play".

So, without further ado, here's Austra's latest single, Lose It, which is out on 9th May.

Austra - Lose It


And here, for the sake of reference, is Kate's solo version from two years ago.

Katie Stelmanis - Lose It

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Born This Way Of Glory

This country retooling of Born This Way has got the internet so excited this morning it's wet its pants.

Fair enough.

Lady Gaga - Born This Way (The Country Road Version)


But now that it's over, I find myself craving this...

Jon Bon Jovi - Blaze Of Glory

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