Jess Mills - Gabriel

She's one of the brightest new pop talents making waves in 2012, and with the release of her delightfully fizzy single Pixelated People on the horizon (think Katy B crossed with Sunday Girl) things are looking promising indeed for Jess Mills.

Pushing further down the path of enchanting ethereal synth-pop, Jess turns her hands to covering Roy Davis Jr's Gabriel here - the results are a smoothly ambient stream of Balearic bliss. It's slick contemporary pop, the kind of stuff to unite radio airwaves and neon-painted club dancefloor in union - plus, those jazzy horn riffs that pop up halfway through are just divine.

Gabriel features on the Pixelated People digital bundle, available to download from the 29th January.

Jess Mills - Gabriel by Jess Mills

Smoove & Turrell - Gabriel

It's funny, you know. Singer-songwriters, that hazy collective sobriquet applied to so many man-and-his-guitar these days, are the kind of people you'd imagine to be all about heart and soul. But these days, and often quite rightly, the genre has come into a fair bit of disrepute for banging out paper thin artists who rest their whole career on one chart-friendly button-pushing number.

Not for Smoove & Turrell though. For starters, they're a duo. But more importantly, their brand of singer-songwritery stuff - highlighted perfectly in new single Gabriel -  is possessed of such soul, such genuine quality that you'd forgive mostly everyone else for packing up and going home.

The vocals are rich and sonorous, deep and soulful. Just like the darkness of the night-time set video, this is music for the star-light hours, a stellar performance of a more full-bodied kind of song. The duo have already had exposure on both Football Focus and Strictly Come Dancing, and Radio 2 loved the track so much they playlisted it five weeks before release.

But such acclaim is understandable in the presence of a song of such beauty. Maybe it's the beginnings of a sea-change, but Smoove & Turrell come like a breath of fresh air into a market straining under the weight of pale imitation types. In this instance, Gabriel is the real thing, the genuine article.

Gabriel is available to download on iTunes now.