Get your fishnet gloves at the ready, 'cos here's a new single from 80s throwback pop sensation Ronkia.
Regular viewers might remember I was very excited about Ronika this time last year - but then she sort of disappeared. There was a remix for Little Boots, a sampladelic mixtape, some vague mutterings about Berlin - and then she caught pneumonia. Luckily, the doctors patched her lungs up, and Ronika is back, Back, BACK!!
Her new single Rough and Soothe is bouncier than a Tigger, and twice as much fun. It also features the lyric of the year: "Bossa nova / Casanova / Play it nice and slow on my Casio, will ya?" Sadly, it does not contain the equally-amazing verse Ronika tweeted last week: "Does your love only come, does your love only come, does he only come, in a volvo?"
Not bad for someone who says she struggles with words, and has to "go shoplifting" for her lyrics.
The good news with this single is that it heralds the arrival of Ronika's debut album. No firm release date yet, but as the Nottingham singer has yet to put a foot wrong, it's already a dead cert for my end of year list.
Do we really need another Gabrielle Aplin? Well, yes. It's always good to have a spare in case the first one bursts.
Joking aside (and let's be honest, it wasn't even a good joke) Lauren Aquilina could be one to watch in 2013. She's already toured with Bastille and Gabrielle Aplin (natch) and has just sold out a headline show at London's Borderline in less than 48 hours.
Lauren is only 17, and lives in Windsor next door to the Queen. The unusual surname, pronounced "aqua-leena", comes from the Maltese side of her family. "It means eagle," she explains.
The singer-songwriter is still finishing off her A-Levels, but she's managed to get some time off school to play the SXSW festival in March, where's she'll meet a bunch of music industry bigwigs. She'll also be introduced to people with smaller wigs, and maybe a bald man in a hat.
The reason for all this fuss is Lauren's excellent Fools EP. Although it's been up on iTunes since October, the four-track single received a big boost after featuring on Hollyoaks a couple of weeks ago. Radio One have just added the title track to their Introducing playlist, too, so things are definitely looking good.
The song itself is a delicate, stylish piano ballad about two friends who've fallen for each other, but can't decide what to do: "What if we ruin it all and we love like fools?" asks Lauren in the chorus. It's simple enough to feel truthful, but deep enough to get under your skin.
By the way, Lauren's another one of those YouTube success stories, who's built a sizeable fanbase by posting piano-led cover versions online.
It's interesting how this has thrown up several artists (Aplin, Nina Nesbitt, Kate McGill, Ed Sheeran) who've scored massive teenage fanbases with the sort of reflective, acoustic music normally associated with Radio 2's housewife demographic. All of them write intelligent lyrics about first love and schoolyard crushes, but they're also very approachable and funny on their social media accounts.
Lauren is a case in point - she posts the chord sequences for her songs online, spends hours replying to fans, and has a great collection of irreverent tweets.
@beyonce Who does a girl have to email to support you on tour? I have a reasonable dose of sass and a great ass. Please get back to me.
— Lauren Aquilina (@laurenaquilina) February 28, 2013
I had a near death experience involving a marshmallow yesterday
— Lauren Aquilina (@laurenaquilina) February 22, 2013
So, keep an eye out for more. Lauren's still unsigned, but I can't imagine that continuing for much longer. I'll leave you with her "better than the original" cover of Cher Lloyd's With Ur Love, which was her first break-out YouTube hit last year. Nice.
Do you know what I'm in the mood for right now? Four minutes of kaleidoscopic, psychedelic dance pop. And as if by magic, here are Sydney's Jagwar Ma, doing their best acid-era Primal Scream trance wobble impersonations. What are the chances?
Formed in 2011 and quickly snapped up by XL Records, Jagwar Ma are Jono Ma, Jack Freeman and Gabriel Winterfield. The band name is presumably a jumbled combination of those syllables, but they haven't been forthcoming with an explanation yet. Their various websites give nothing away, either, simply plugging their latest videos and tours, with scant biographical information.
Even interviews are vague. Speaking backstage at Australia's Big Day Out festival last month, Gabriel was prompted to give a few details about their debut album. "The title is... we don't have a title," he deadpanned. "The ETA is, like, May, but I don't know the actual date." The band later revealed they'd been influenced by acid house, northern soul and the "cut and paste" production techniques of The Avalanches. The result is "electronic music imitating the '60s", they added.
Anyone listening to their new single The Throw could have worked that out in about 10 seconds. It's a corker, though - all baggy vibes and Balearic beats, building up to a euphoric choral climax. The radio edit is about half the length of the album version, but loses none of the magic.
If you like what you hear, the single is out now and Jagwar Ma are in session for Huw Stephens this Sunday. For more info, this interviewer makes a better fist of getting coherent sentences out of the band than most...
Former Disney starlette Demi Lovato (rhymes with tomato) has never really troubled my ears before. She's had a couple of low-charting singles in the UK, but nothing you'd ever get truly excited about. Basically, she's the brunette Miley Cyrus.
Until now, that is. Following a career-making stint on US X Factor (where she proved a feisty foil to Simon Cowell, calling him "annoying and old") she's been back in the studio making a concerted effort to make a global hit record.
If that sounds calculated, it's because it is. Her new single Heart Attack is incredible, but cynical - built from all the best bits of the best pop songs of the last five years. It's got the whip-snap production of a Katy Perry single, the electro-acoustic strum of Taylor Swift's pop reinvention, the dumbstruck love lyrics of a Bruno Mars ballad, and an anthemic chorus straight out of Fun's big hook book.
The production, we're told, comes from Grammy nominated powerhouse "The Suspex" but a bit of poking around on the internet reveals that one half of the the duo is actually Lovato's old songwriter from the film Band Camp, who also worked on Hannah Montana and a bunch of other Disney projects.
All pedantry aside, Heart Attack is a great song. And what really sells it is Lovato's powerhouse voice - reminiscent of Christina Aguilera before she lost all sense of nuance and just started screeching like a hormonal cat. Carefully-accented and bursting with personality, she sounds sad in the sad bits and strong in the strong bits. It's an invigorating listen.
But be warned: you won't escape this song until 2015.
PS: The song's message - "I'm scared of falling in love right now, so I'm putting my defences up" - seems to be pulled directly from Lovato's own life. In an interview with Elle earlier this year, she said: "It is very unhealthy when girls devote all of their time to a guy and forget their friends and family. I did that. I was always looking for distractions because I was so afraid of being alone. I have spent the last year focusing on myself and it's been incredible. More has come out of the past year than in my entire career so far, and I truly believe it was because I was taking care of myself and not focusing on guys."
Amazing musical portmanteau AlunaGeorge have just announced their new single, Attracting Flies. If you haven't been following the progress of the St Albans-based band, where have you been? They were the most-blogged about artists of 2012 (ok, not necessarily a recommendation) and came second in the BBC's Sound Of 2013 list.
As a result, the "proper" media has latched onto the future-funk electro-pop R&B duo and booked some interviews. Here's what we've found out by reading all the articles about Aluna Francis (she's the girl) and George Reid (he's not the girl) we could find.
:: They met on MySpace. "It didn't seem weird at the time," confessed Aluna, "but when you say that now it sounds a bit geeky! Like a dating agency or something." [The Line Of Best Fit]
:: They bonded over a shared love of Radiohead. Aluna gets a little squiffy about Thom Yorke. "I cried at his gig and everyone around me was like 'Are you okay?' and I was crying going, 'I'm fine! I'm just a really big fan! Just don't look at me!" [The Fader]
:: George got his first CD player in 1996. It was a Christmas present, and it came with Michael Jackson's HIStory and Huge Hits 96, which included such era-defining tracks as Breakfast At Tiffanys, Mysterious Girl and Ooh Ah, Just A Little Bit. You can clearly hear the traces of those classics in his current "oeuvre". [Mobo]
:: Writing music is easy peasy. "We've got good beats that are either sexy or dancey and then songs on top," says Aluna. [BBC]
:: Porn has not been ruled out as a career option. "Where will we be in five years? Getting our baps and balls out for money." [Idol]
:: Debut album Body Music is designed for a variety of uses, like a swiss army knife. "From dancing in front of the mirror, studying, or kissing your new boyfriend or girlfriend, painting a picture; there's a song for each kind of mood," says Aluna. [Digital Spy]
:: George is aware that he is the band's Chris Lowe. "When we were working together at first I didn't really see us being a band," he said. "I thought, 'Aluna's the thing here.'" But his foil "hated the idea of being a solo artist". [Evening Standard]
:: The duo have big ambitions. "Moon," declares Aluna. "First band to play on the moon." [The Brits]
Attracting Flies is out on 10 March, but Body Music won't be in shops until July.
Last November, Radio One's head of music George Ergatoudis promised on his Twitter account that "Guitar music is definitely on the way back". He gave a more nuanced version of his argument to Digital Spy in January - saying Radio One's audience research showed people are "beginning to tire of the formulaic sounds that make up much of the Top 40 singles chart" but that he doesn't think "we'll see the important guitar acts of this decade really smashing it until 2015."
Still, if the man insiders call George Egg-And-Two-Chips says guitars are coming back, it's probably true. And if we're going to have to have planks spanked and strings twanged, I'd like to nominate the Ruen Brothers to do it.
They're called Henry and Rupert, but before you write them off as tweed-jacketed toffs reluctantly forced to play "the pop" music to save Downton Abbey, bear in mind they hail from Scunthorpe and would probably do you in a fight.
According to their official biography, the Ruen Brothers "write almost everything you hear" (what, even birdsong?) and have been given two enthusiastic thumbs by Paul Gambaccini, of 'someone has died, quick find me a pundit' fame.
'ACES stunned me. The instrumental introduction made me think of the
Black Keys ... then in came the vocals reminiscent of Brandon Flowers.
Dare I say it, this sounds like a commercial single.' Paul Gambaccini
