Rihanna has a severe case of feminine itch

You know you can get a cream for that, love?

Rihanna - Where Have You Been

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New from MIA: Come Walk With Me

MIA tweeted a link to this, apparently unofficial, video last night... The dance moves are incredible, and the song's mixture of 60s girlpop and chaotic noise is sublime. Presumably Come Walk With Me is a new song from her forthcoming album. In which case, I can't wait for that release date to roll around.

MIA - Come Walk With Me

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Stooshe redeem themselves

I had a dig at Stooshe's pointless cover version of Things That Make You Go Hmm... last week so it's only fair that, in the interests of balance, I point out that their latest video is actually quite good.

Black Heart is a retro soul torch ballad, and the girls get all glammed up for the videogram. Thankfully, they keep the inane "Oim so blaaahdy quirky, innit?" chatter to a minimum, and there's an unexpected chord change in the chorus that just kills.

Stooshe, you have been temporarily reprieved from the shit list. Well played.

Stooshe - Black Heart

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Azealia Banks & Lana Del Rey - together at last

When they're not lazing about in hotel bedrooms, it turns out that Lana Del Rey and sweary rapping lady Azealia Banks have a mutual appreciation society going on. That's led to a collaboration on Lana's new single, Blue Jeans, which has been remixed and spruced up with a high-octane cameo from Ms Banks. There is also a massive donk on it.

File this one under "totally unexpected", but create a separate index card for "audacious and awesome".



While I'm here, there's a new Lana Del Rey video I've been meaning to post all week.

It's to accompany album track Carmen and it sees Lana return to the found footage montages she created for some of her demo tracks last year. The difference this time is that her YouTube page lists credits all the vinatge videos she's "borrowed". This may have something to do with the fact that Lana got sued to high heaven over the Video Games promo last year.

"That was a bad day," she told me in January. "A million views and it got wiped out. I have a copyright specialist that I work with now." Ooops!

Lana Del Rey - Carmen

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Here is Nicki Minaj's video for Starships

The much-delayed, heavy-on-the-subtlety video for Nicki Minaj's Starships has finally arrived.

If you've been hoping the clip would linger on uncomfortably explicit shots of Nicki's boobs then, boy, are you in luck.

Nicki Minaj - Starships


So, is starships basically a euphemism for tits? Answers on a postcard, etc.

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Two women sitting on a floor

Ren Harvieu sounds like a small village on the French coast, full of wrinkly old men in berets chomping on onions and playing pétanque.

But it turns out Ren Harvieu is actually a raven-haired 21-year-old singer from Salford with a right proper Northern accent. Her singing voice, on the other hand, is treacle-dark - sonorous and melancholy, and recorded with more reverb than the Grand Canyon.

Ren describes her music as "passionate, dramatic, intense, emotional". Accordingly, she has been compared to Dusty Springfield, Peggy Lee and The Walker Brothers. Or, as one writer put it, Ren is for people who "secretly like Rumer but think she's too mumsy".

I enjoyed her debut single, Through The Night, back in January (although not enough to write about it, natch). The follow-up is even better. The Train Song is a duet with former Mrs Jack White, Karen Elson, which fits neatly next to The Pierces on my playlist of female-fronted gothic rock close-harmony love ballads.

The video sees the two singers pulling their best Abba poses, while sitting resolutely still on the floor. But, given that Ren was nearly paralysed after breaking her back last year, you can fogive her for not doing a full-on George Sampson funky banjo dance.

Renm Harvieu and Karen Elson - The Train Song

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