Animal Collective
Summertime Clothes [single]
29/06/2009
Domino
Ape School, Daedelus, Beach Boys, Yes

What's to plug? We all loved ‘My Girls’ didn’t we? We didn’t have a clue what it was about, but we assumed in the context of all the yummy euphoria and Beach Boy harmonies that it would have to be about something good: I mean, everybody just wants a proper house for their kids, don’t they? Anyway, I’m also sure that ‘Summertime Clothes’ got most repeats on your Ipod, probably for similar reasons. Instantly infectious and as fizzy as a bucket of Panda Pops. See the boys at Glastonbury festival (Park Stage) and at London Brixton Academy in August.

Summertime Clothes [video] | Real Media [lo]
Summertime Clothes [video] | Real Media [hi]
Summertime Clothes [video] | Windows Media [lo]
Summertime Clothes [video] | Windows Media [hi]

Jon Hopkins
Light Through the Veins [single]
11/05/2009
Double Six
Brian Eno, Four Tet, Morton Feldman, Sigur Ros, John Cage

What's to plug? A ‘musical shapeshifter’ - that’s how his label describe him, which makes him sound like some crazy morphing creature out of the X-Files who can squeeze up U-bends and the like whilst whistling or something. But the truth is even stranger, because if this tune sounds familiar it is because it lent its own musical shape to Coldplay’s Viva La Vida album. Remember the bit where it fades in and fades out? Just before the clanging Teardrop Explodes strings at the beginning and the really sad ‘escape’ bit at the end? That’s this tune. Hopkins is credited as the album’s ‘additional producer’ and for providing ‘colours’ (which I can only imagine is ambient noises rather than for splashing Dulux everywhere). Anyway, here it is without Chris Martin weeping all over it. New album, ‘Insides’ is out on the 11th May. After the scrap they had with Joe Satriani, it makes you wonder what Coldplay actually contributed to the album.

Through the Veins [video] | Windows Media [lo]
Through the Veins [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Through the Veins [video] | Real Media [lo]
Through the Veins [video] | Real Media [hi]

Pete Doherty
Last of the English Roses [single]
09/03/2009
Parlophone
Last Shadow Puppets, Pulp, Blur, Jackie Leven

What's to plug? Leaving nothing to chance by the looks of things. Chorus rattles out a less than convincing ‘girls who are boys, who like boys to be girls’ terrace chant, video shows our ordinary British Pete mucking in playing footie with said boys on some reasonably anonymous recreation ground. Not since Blur cooked up a Sunday Roast and clued in some loud-mouth cockney bloke has an artist been so determined to have his material validated by the curry-quaffing lager masses. The first single to be taken from Doherty’s upcoming solo album, ‘Grace / Wasteland’ sees the woozy bedsit emperor rope in Graham Coxon on guitar and Stephen Street on playground duty. Needless to say that Pete’s control of his quality is no greater than his control of the ball. The gay kiss at the end don't half subvert things though. That was unexpected.

Last of the English Roses [video] | Windows Media [lo]
Last of the English Roses [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Last of the English Roses [video] | Real Media [lo]
Last of the English Roses [video] | Real Media [hi]

Franz Ferdinand
Ulysses
16/01/2009
Domino
Gang of Four, Josef K, Throbbing Gristle, Devo, LCD Sound System

What's to plug? Courtesy of a home for the deaf, some fibreglass, a little rockwall and the good people of Glasgow and Fort William, the savvy and tirelessly tight-assed and swanky, Franz Ferdinand unleash third-album, ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’ to a nominally suspecting audience on Monday 26th January 2009. By way of foreplay, however, the band release new single, ‘Ulysses’ a week before, eagerly fondling the anxious divide between new wave, old wave, post-punk and post-electric, which all roughly translates as part throbbing synth-gristle, part noir and part ‘art-beat’ party anthem. Love is not only the seventh wave. It’s also the new wave.

Ulysses [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Ulysses [video] | Windows Media [hi]

Robert Wyatt and Bertrand Burglat
This Summer Night
20/10/2008
Domino Records
Hot Chip, daft Punk, Air, Aim, The Avalanaches

What's to plug? With the exception of a Maureen Nolan-John Cale collaboration they don’t come much more eclectic than this, the wheelchair-bound genius of 70s mushroom man, Robert Wyatt funking it up with eccentric French producer, Bertrand Burgalat and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor on the hip-swiveling, wheelchair-spinning, mirror-ball smashing disco freakout that is, ‘This Summer Night’. Naturally, it’s a totally inappropriate and anachronistic release for December, but then what should one expect of England’s most shameless recording mavericks? Bertrand Burgalat, on the otherhand is perhaps more famous for producing a track-for-track remake of the Beatle’s ‘Let it Be’ album for avante-garde band, Laibach. Infectiously esoteric.

This Summer Night [video] | Windows Media [hi]
This Summer Night [video] | Windows Media [lo]
This Summer Night [video] | Real Media [hi]

Eugen McGuiness
Eugen McGuiness (LP) / Moscow State Circus (single)
13:10:09
Domino
Magnetic Fields, Last Shadow Puppets, Jim Noir, Theresa Andersson

What's to plug? We loved him the first time around and we love the wee little fella now. Moscow State Circus is the brand new single from Eugene McGuinness, released on October 27th. It is the first single taken from his self-titled forthcoming album, out through Domino on 13th October. Twisty, turny and wriggling like some snake-hipped charmer gatecrashing the stage during a performance of the Nutcracker Suite, Moscow State Circus marks an audacious return to form for the 22 year old Arctic Monkeys contemporary. Not that it’s a straightforward proposition, providing as it does a fairly looking-glass take on equally baroque Domino releases like ‘The Age of Understatement’. And I don’t make the comparison lightly: show tunes, crazy songs about the Fonz, lamentful ruminations about Wendy and magical monochrome classics like, ‘Those Old Black and White Movies Were True’. It’s like stuffing the Magnetic Field’s 69 Love Songs down Alex and Mile’s Y-Fronts. The 7” is backed with And The City’s But A Giant Game Of Jenga, a more mellow, gentle, contemplative acoustic number.

Moscow State Circus [video] | Real Media [hi]
Moscow State Circus [video] | Real Media [lo]
Moscow State Circus [video] | Windows Media [lo]
Moscow State Circus [video] | Windows Media [hi]

The Verve
Love Is Noise
03/08/2007
Parlophone
Oasis, Neil Diamond, The Verve, New Order, Charlatans

What's to plug? They’re back. Normally, it’s a statement that is met with gasps, the momentary suspension of belief or (perhaps more infrequently) a crack of thunder and the appearance of a chorus of angels. But this time there’s little more than the shuffling of feet, polite smiles and weary resignation to greet it. Produced by the band and recorded at State Of The Ark and Metropolis studio in London, 'Love Is Noise' is the first single is taken from their new album ‘Forth’, due for release on Monday 18th August 2008. By most people’s standards it would be an audacious, triumphant return, but whether it’s because we are expecting the earth to shift its axis each time Ashcroft opens his mouth or simply because it has that wretched ‘disco’ beat, it has all the impact of a 0.5 pound meteorite hurtling through our atmosphere and blazing a fiery but unnoticed trail before sinking into the dirt of a small allotment in Billenge. Capable of standing on the shoulder of giants, the Verve settle for scabbing a piggy back off their own lofty status. Enjoy the trail it leaves rather than the impact it makes. Appearing at the V Festival in August.

Love Is Noise [video] | Real Media [lo]
Love Is Noise [video] | Real Media [hi]
Love Is Noise [video] | Windows Media [lo]
Love Is Noise [video] | Windows Media [hi]

Oh Laura
Release Me [single]
14/07/2008
Cosmos
Hem, Sigur Ros, Bjork, The Concretes, Beth Orton

What's to plug? You don’t really expect Sweden to throw out gentle, lo-fi acoustica in the mould of Sigur Ros and dusty country sweethearts like Hem, but if the Swedes are one thing it’s unpredictable. A soul-feeding five-piece formed by Jocke Olovsson and Jörgen Kjellgren and built around the swirling, magical vocals of Frida Öhrn in the same way a log fire is built around the fiery embers at the centre of the grate. A massive hit in Sweden, the single precedes the release of the band’s new album, ‘A Song Inside My Head A Demon In My Bed on January 28th. Those with a sharp ear and a penchant for Euro channels might recognise the song from Saab international car ad.

Release Me [video] | Real Media [hi]
Release Me [video] | Real Media [lo]
Release Me [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Release Me [video] | Windows Media [lo]

White Williams
Smoke (album) Violator (single)
16/06/2008
Double Six
Elton Motello, Hot Chip, Fischerspooner, Chicory Tip, Plastic Bertrand

What's to plug? If there’s a sizeable crack in your record collection between your Marc Bolan , your Giorgio Moroder and your fancy Fischerspooner records then squeeze in a bit of this: the laptop-dancing, moog twiddlin’, genre-bendin’ debut from White Williams. Recorded over two years by the Cleveland 24 year-old in various sublets in New York and San Francisco, ‘Smoke’ rifles through an unpredictable archive of pop, cartoon afro, talking heads, noise libraries, funk and circuit-board psychedelia. A bit like Hot Chip. Only on acid. New single ‘Violator’ is released on the 16th June on strictly limited edition hand-stamped 7” vinyl. Feast your lugholes on this. It’s full of vintage goodness.

Violator | Real Media [lo]
Violator | Real Media [hi]
Violator | Windows Media [lo]
Violator | Windows Media [hi]

Hot Chip
One Pure Thought [single]
12/04/2008
EMI
Devo, Kraftwerk, Art of Noise, Black Grass, Buggles, The Korgis

What's to plug? Fair enough, they might not let go in the same way Peaches or Test Iciles used to let go, but they've loosened their grip, relaxed their anal sphincter muscles and unbuttoned their shirts. Not quite as poppy as 'Ready For the Floor' but just as wriggly, rubbery and infectious and trangressing as many boundaries as Graham Norton in a Male Voice Choir. In Britain they’ve already confirmed Glastonbury, V Festival, All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP Vs Pitchfork) and T in the Park with more announcements still to come.

One Pure Thought [video] | Real Media [lo]
One Pure Thought [video] | Real Media [hi]
One Pure Thought [video] | Windows Media [lo]
One Pure Thought [video] | Windows Media [hi]

The Corrections
Barcode
07/04/2008
EMI
Wire, Arcade Fire, Interpol, Killers, XTC, Kaiser Chiefs

What's to plug? This is more like it: feisty, fiery and firsty. Barcode is the first single to be taken from London-based five piece The Corrections’ forthcoming debut album ‘Repeat After Me’ on EMI Records. Morsey, staccato buzz-action intro, a few spiky riffs, a few snappy beats and Joe Winter's urgent, paranoid vocals provide the board the rest of the song kicks back against in a springy New Wave fashion. Part Vapours, part Killers (when they were good) and part Josh Homme's right hand. If XTC had been born in Palm Desert, California and not Swindon - this is what they might have sounded like. The band play the London, Islington Bar Academy on 1st April.

Barcode [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Barcode [video] | Windows Media [lo]
Barcode [video] | Real Media [hi]
Barcode [video] | Real Media [lo]

Sonic Hearts
To Be Someone (single)
31/03/2008
EMI
Stereophonics, Magic Numbers, Wannadies, Scouting For Girls

What's to plug? Jesus, The Feeling have got something to answer for. First there was The Hoosiers, then we had Scouting For Girls and now we have these little pant-swinging, fudge-packing sweethearts to put up with. It’s like somebody took the lid off Pandora’s Box only to find there was a handful of wet tissues and a couple of fluffy toys by way of a danger. It’s nice – don’t get me wrong – but it makes The Delays sound like Alien Sex Fiend. Taken from their forthcoming, debut album ‘Sunrise’, produced by the Sterophonic’s Jim Lowe; ‘To Be Someone’ is to pop what helium is to balloons – uplifting but entirely predictable. The forecast is looking decidedly wet. Perhaps this is why Rihanna was banging on so much about an umbrella.

To Be Someone [video] | Windows Media [lo]
To Be Someone [video] | Windows Media [hi]
To Be Someone [video] | Real Media [lo]
To Be Someone [video] | Real Media [hi]

Badly Drawn Boy
The Times of Times [single]
04/02/2008
EMI
Liam Frost, John Lennon, Burt Bacharach, Matthew Jay, Elliot Smith

What's to plug? “The Time Of Times”, a newly reworked version of one of the best tracks from Badly's 2006 album “Born In The UK”, will be available to download on the 4th of February 2008. This new version of the track features in the upcoming Working Title film “Definitely Maybe” a romantic comedy starring Rachel Weisz, directed and written by Adam Brookes. The film is released 8th February 2008. It's the second time Damon has soundtracked the pretty face of Weisz - the first being 'About A Boy' in 2003. Damon is busy working on new material which is set to be released later this year, so watch this space.

The Times of Times [video] | Real Media [hi]
The Times of Times [video] | Real Media [lo]
The Times of Times [video] | Windows Media [lo]
The Times of Times [video] | Windows Media [hi]

The Kills
Cheap and Cheerful [single]
03/03/2008
Domino Records
PJ Harvey, LCD Sound System, Royal Trux , Siouxsie and the Banshees

What's to plug? The pair are alleged to have taken inspiration from Pizza Pizza Daddio, a Sixties documentary about kids in inner-city schools in the USA, and the children’s rather dark, macabre playground songs (hey, ain’ they always?). Banged out on an old school hand-punched MPC-60 hip hop drum sequencer, the end result is this – a timeless and shamefully forthright shot of adrenalin right where you need it most – in the groin. The production, featuring beats and studio smarts come from Spank Rock’s producer Alex Epton aka Armani XXXchange. The killer hooks, teases and curls could only come from space. Spanky and uncomplicated. Just how all good girls should be.

Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [lo]
Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [hi]
Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [lo]
Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [hi]

Hot Chip
Ready For A Fall [single]
28/01/2008
EMI
Devo, Kraftwerk, Art of Noise, Buggles, The Korgis

What's to plug? Let's face it, Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor is determined we should find him and his chums amusing. They've tried oversized Joe 90 glasses, they've tried monkeys, and they’ve tried matching jumpsuits. This time, however, Alexis is pulling out all the stops and dressing up as the joker to demonstrate just how outrageous a guy he is. But why bother making a spectacle of yourself when the trade-off is as attractive as this? Did Lennon need over-sized glasses? Did Hendrix don elongated clown shoes to put his point across? ‘Ready For The Floor’ is the first single to be taken from Hot Chip’s forth coming album ‘Made In The Dark’. It's excellent. With hilarious consequences naturally.

Ready For A Fall [video] | Real Media [hi]
Ready For A Fall [video] | Real Media [lo]
Ready For A Fall [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Ready For A Fall [video] | Windows Media [lo]

Sons and Daughters
Darling [single]
14/01/2008
Domino
Birthday Party, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Gordon Gano, B52s

What's to plug? As sexy as having a purring cat down your trousers and a leopard-skin kiss both. Having wowed audiences with an extensive 28 date UK tour this autumn, Sons And Daughters return in the New Year for a fresh run of dates in February. Dates include Sheffield Leadmill on 07/02/08, Manchester Academy on 09/02/08, London ULU on 12/02/08, Glasgow ABC on 15/02/08 and Edinburgh Queens Hall on16/02/08. New album 'This Gift' has been produced by Bernard Butler and is released on 28th January on Domino Records. New single 'Darling' is released on 14th January on Domino.

Darling [video] | Real Media [hi]
Darling [video] | Real Media [lo]
Darling [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Darling [video] | Windows Media [lo]

Make Model
The Was [single]
19/11/2007
EMI Records
Flaming Lips, Red Box, Polyphonic Spree, Guillemots

What's to plug? Following the release of their debut single, ‘The LSB’ on their own imprint The Biz earlier in the year, Glasgow’s new dazzling pop-therapy sweethearts, Make Model are preparing to ramp up the stakes with second single, ‘The Was’, out on November 19th 2007 through EMI. Something of a statement of intent, the terrifically uplifting ‘The Was’ combines the pre-school silliness of Lemon Jelly, the throbbing love euphoria of The Guillemots and the brass-busting, harp-tugging orchestral sweep of the Polyphonic Spree at their most magical and sublime. Throw in a xylophone and dashes of space-rock backing vocals exploding like fireworks across the mix and you have something approaching methylenedioxymethamphetamine for lugholes.

The Was [video] | Windows Media [hi]
The Was [video] | Windows Media [lo]
The Was [video] | Real Media [hi]
The Was [video] | Real Media [lo]

The Little Ones
Ordinary Song [single]
28/01/2008
Heavenly Recordings
The Stills, The Shins, Magic Numbers, Nada Surf

What's to plug? For those of you unfamilar with California's The Little Ones, well they're a little like what you get at the bottom of a Sherbert Fountain when you've run out of liquorice - there might not be much of them but once you manage to get your finger in and scrape it around, there's no small shortage of sunshine or surprises. Think of The Shins with the gruelling optimism of the Magic Numbers - on Space Hoppers. It's bold, it's bright and comes rattling off the back of 2007's 'Sing Song' mini-album. ‘Ordinary song’ is the lead-up single of a new album, ‘Morning Tide’ recorded in LA with Dave Newton.

Ordinary Song [video] | Real Media [hi]
Ordinary Song [video] | Real Media [lo]
Ordinary Song [video] | Windows Media [hi]
Ordinary Song [video] | Windows Media [lo]

Blue Man Group
Canta Conmigo
08/11/2007
Blue Man
Ricky Martin, Basement Jaxx, Roger Sanchez, DJ Norty Cotto

What's to plug? Since September 2006, Blue Man Group has been on the road with our How to be a Megastar Tour, a live rock show takes the audience through a satirical "workshop" on how to create "the perfect rock concert experience." The latest leg of the tour took the band to Mexico and South America which inspired the translation and new musical arrangement of “Sing Along” to “Canta Conmigo”. This stand out concert cut has been turned into an all out party pleasure with mixes for everyone from Funky Junction, Nikodemus, Onionz and Gaea. The band recently performed at Latin GRAMMY® Awards with hip-swivelling lothario, Ricky Martin.

Canta Conmigo [Original Mix] | Real Media
Canta Conmigo [Spanish Vocal] | Real Media

Wild Beasts
Assembly
26/11/2007
Domino
Cardiacs, bonkers Scott Walker stuff, XTC, Dudley Moore, Guillemots

What's to plug? What is it about Kendal that insists on dispatching us up tor and lofty crag with little more than a half-pound of mint-cake, a pair of stout walking boots and the shortest of guitar straps imaginable? Hayden Thorpe just like his Lake District brother, ‘Yan’ Wilkinson of fellow Kendal mint-band, British Sea Power both wear their guitars somewhere just short of their neck line and both are responsible for staging some of the most theatrical costume spectacles this side of a Wayne Coyne walking-bubble. An exotic falsetto, a little music hall, some bunk beds, a pair of drooping breasts and some bizarrely ticklish ivories. Comes somewhere between The Cardiacs, XTC, Monty Python and a Year 7 assembly. Eccentric but not duff. Come backed by the faintly ‘Tilt-esque’, ‘Sylvia, A Melodrama’.

Assembly [video] | Real Media [lo]
Assembly [video] | Windows Media 56K
Assembly [video] | Real Media [hi]
Assembly [video] | Windows Media [hi]