A tale of two Toves

It's a good Friday when you get a new single from Tove Lo and Tove Styrke - officially pop's two best Toves.

First up is Tove Lo, who pops up on Close, the lusty new single by Nick Jonas. Ignoring the fact she'd eat him alive, their duet is admittedly a firework in a powder keg in a volcano.

You can tell Tove approves of the song as, unlike her recent duet with Years & Years, she bothered to turn up for the video.


Tove Styrke - the more alternative Tove of the two Toves - also appears on a collaboration, in this case with wave-making producer Big Wild.

She's added vocals to his instrumental hit Afterglow and, like Sophie Ellis Bextor on Groovejet, improved the track ten-fold.

Just take the opening lyric: "How cool would it be to have diamonds on the soles of my feet / Cause I've worn these sneakers since I was 13."

Superb.

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New discovery: Open Mike Eagle - Check To Check

I've just stumbled across the latest single by Los Angeles rap alchemist Open Mike Eagle, and thought it was worth a mention (even though it came out over a month ago).

Check To Check is a whimsical, but pointed, diatribe about our (and Mike's) obsession with technology. “I won’t work without checking my phone first / Put it down for my son when I’m checking his homework,” he drawls sleepily over a dusty drumbeat. “I’m recording right now and I’m checking between takes / Every notification that my phone machine makes.”

It's been generating a few plays on Radio 1, where Huw Stephens is a fan, and you can download if for free on Bandcamp.



Check To Check is the first offering from Mike's new album, Hella Personal Music Festival, which is a collaborative project with British producer Paul White.

According a press release, the record was recorded in London and features guest appearances from Aesop Rock and Future Islands' Sam Herring's rapping alter ego, Hemlock Ernst.

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Something wicked this way comes

"You are completely on your own tip," said Anne Mac, interviewing Bonzai on her Radio 1 show earlier tonight. The Irish-American singer certainly has a unique style - equally influenced by The Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers, Beyonce and Ashanti.

"It is a bit mad," Bonzai conceded. "I listen to a lot of different music."

Her new single, No Rest For The Wicked, certainly doesn't pull its punches. In just three minutes, Bonzai packs in a couple of silky hooks, a subterranean bassline, two drawling raps, a crunching breakbeat, hyperspectral acid squelches, and the best use of a guiro since Tone Loc's Wild Thing.

It was Annie Mac's hottest record, and for good reason.


If you like the sound of that, Bonzai's just finished her new EP, Sleepy Hungry, which should appear on iTunes overnight, courtesy of Mura Masa's Anchor Point Records.

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Sia and Maddie Ziegler provide Cheap Thrills

Last year's Big Girls Cry was billed as the "final act" in Sia's trilogy of videos with teenage dancer Maddie Ziegler. But disproving the adage that all good things must come to an end, the pair are back together for Sia's latest single, Cheap Thrills.

As the song was originally written for Rihanna, it bears none of the psychodramatic hallmarks of Sia's more autobiographical material. "I realized just as soon as I was cutting it that it sounded a little bit too Brit-pop for [Rihanna]," Sia told Rolling Stone. "There's something really uplifting about [the song] that put me in a good mood... It felt very 'summer' and fun."

The bouncy synthpop gives Ziegler the chance to goof off, pulling beserk faces throughout and dopey poses throughout the clip while Sia - because she is still Sia - stands inert in the corner.

It's billed as a "performance edit" - so presumably there's a bigger-budget version of the video mired in a post-production suite right now. But I'll happily take this one instead.

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Video: Meghan Trainor - No

Meghan Trainor's new Nø song is a carbon copy of Britney Spears at her Max Martin-era best. So what's to stop her making an elaborate dance video that's equally indebted to Britney? The answer is "absolutely nothing, dummies".

The star employed one of the best to make it happen - Fatima Robinson, who directed Michael Jackson's Remember The Time, Mary J. Blige's Family Affair and The Black Eyed Peas' My Humps. The result is a marriage made in hair-flick heaven.

I'm still sitting on the fence about the song, which is incredible (for a Meghan Trainor song) and above-average (for anyone else). Maybe the video will help us all form a more objective opinion.

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Iggy Azealea sounds embattled

"Yeah, baby I got me / And that's all I need / Only friend I see / Playing on my team."

Those are some pretty lonely lyrics, no matter how defiantly they're presented. But then, the star openly admits 2015 - which involved multiple Twitter "beefs", accusations she had appropriating black culture and an abruptly cancelled tour - was a toughie.

"If I could, I would Men in Black memory-erase 2015, I totally would - that would be amazing!" she recently told Elle Canada. "I spent a lot of energy last year trying to explain my side of the story because I thought, 'If you could just understand my side, surely you'd agree with me.' But some people aren't ever going to agree with you - and that's just life."

Things are looking up now, though. After scrapping six months of work, she's finally finished her second album, Digital Distortion (surely a reference to her Twitter troubles), and the lead single, Team, topped Billboard's trending charts as soon as it was released this weekend.

Maybe she's not as alone as she thought.


As you can see, that's not the "proper" video. As part of what is no doubt a carefully-coordinated media strategy, she will perform the song on Jimmy Fallon this week before unveiling an official video later in March.

Just to clarify, the video up on Vevo is the dance video. Im going to share a snippet to the offical video this Tuesday on G.M.A !

— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) March 19, 2016

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