Cleo Sol - Never The Right Time (Who Do You Love)

Timeless soul diva or spritzy Spanish beverage? Cleo Sol could quite easily be both, but a perfunctory listen to her debut single affirms she is most definitely the former. Having already featured on tracks by some of the best in UK rap, the songstress goes it alone on the back of a grooved-up chunk of strutting R&B class. There’s something of a gloriously sunny mid 90s summer to the whole affair, quite the antidote to the rancid weather the UK has deigned to deliver us this June. Oh, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that Sol spends much of the video working it out in a variety of figure-hugging outfits. There’s touches of old school Diana Ross there too, a passionate performance that goes far beyond early collabs with Tinie Tempah and Wretch 32, breaking free of her Ladbroke Grove roots and gearing up to take on the world.

Released: July 9^th.

[Official Video] Misha B - Home Run

Misha B IS attitude. A full-on force ten gale when so many of her fellow contestants from the X Factor school of 2011 were mere whimpers in the winds of popular music. And Home Run is everything that was great about her before disastrously poor song choice and tepid styling converted her into a caricature of herself.

The video makes for a neat fit to the track too, colourful and fun for the youth audience Misha is clearly gunning for, but with the accompanying slickness and production whizz to push her to the hipsters to. Dare we say it, Home Run could very well be the first tentative steps in the making of a British Minaj?

Released: 15th July.

[Official Video] Dragonette - Let It Go

In the world of Dragonette, all is bright and colourful and snazzy - even in the sterile scientific conditions of a bleached-out laboratory. But this, being Dragonette, is the kind of quirked-up place where random rabbits and people in cages are a daily occurrence, where the walls practically fizz with the same jerky eclecticism that powers Let It Go itself. All that saturated yellow? That's what happens to you when you swallow a whole bag of flying saucer sweets in less than five minutes. Or if you listen to Let It Go on repeat all day long. In both cases, we can attest it's a pretty good feeling.

Kaiser Chiefs - Listen To Your Head

The new Kaiser Chiefs' single is a bit of a revelation. Firstly, it's really rather good. And secondly, it sounds almost nothing like the Kaiser Chiefs of old. Cutting off all the loose, fatty excess that so marred commercial disaster The Future Is Medieval, Listen To Your Head transforms the band into something far sleeker, infinitely more mature and affected with a quality that even in their enthusiasm and energy of their first two LPs, they never really possessed.

With the slick Hollywood thriller style video in two, all guns and flash cars, Listen To Your Head feels like a band revitalised, kicking their recording career back into touch when it was on the verge of dropping off into disaster and apathy all together. If there's any element of the old Kaisers that does remain, its their knack for a properly anthemic, sing-along chorus - but here it looses the boozed-up chant-along vibe of Ruby and bolts it onto a lush, atmospheric guitar outro. Oh, and those glitchy, icy electronics that flicker over the opening minute of the song are a very nice touch too. Perhaps its apt that the band's best track in ages is the one to front up their forthcoming Greatest Hits compilation - it makes for a nice transitory touch-stone, and hopefully the beginnings of more of this sort of stuff in the future.

Sneakbo feat. L. Marshall - Sing For Tomorrow

Teaming up with Wretch 32 collaborator L. Marshall for his latest effort, bright new London rap talent Sneakbo has been making some rather significant ripples of late. 20 million YouTube views? Easy. 5000 downloads of his most recent mix-tape? Sneakbo's got it covered. But it's in new track Sing For Tomorrow that he presents his case most honestly and successfully.

Opening with a haunting piano melody, underpinned by a surprisingly moving string section, it harks back to the street-tale wisdom of Tupac's Ghetto Gospel, combined with the bite and contemporary sheen of Tinie Tempah's Written In The Stars. Sing For Tomorrow is definitively a gritty South London rap track at heart, wearing its heart blazen on its sleeve - but its real charm is the way it works in a depth of sonic variety and hurt-ridden passion into the production and Marshall's chorus vocals. There's substance to it; emotion, pain, hopes, fears.

In a world of bleak urban wasteland and broken dreams, Sneakbo's track speaks out with a universal ambition - a willingness and power to build onwards and upwards to greater things, and going by initial support, it looks like a journey he'll make with accomplished ease.

Sing For Tomorrow is released on the 4th June.

[Official Video] Rebecca Ferguson - Glitter & Gold

Rebecca Ferguson's voice will never get old for us. Just like her album, it feels utterly timeless - and watching the video for new single Glitter & Gold, which in its gloss and luxury feels like such a well-rounded part of her continuing campaign, you only wish she was riding high up in the charts with the likes of fellow female crooner Emeli Sande. Yes, you can bandy around phrases like 'Oh, but Rebecca's an album artist...', but really, with tracks as good as Glitter & Gold, there's no reason why the nation shouldn't be taking these songs to heart and going out an downloading them in their droves.

There's a standard of songwriting across her Heaven album that sets a new high water-mark for X Factor acts, and Glitter & Gold stands as a real showpiece for that. And as for the video, which wouldn't look out of place as some high-grade M&S advert, well, it fits the silkiness and velour of *that* voice perfectly. Then there's the whole 'Oh, these people are paper cut-outs, they must be *literally* shallow people' thing going on. Frankly, we love it, and we love her too.

[Official Video] Delilah - Breathe

Taking the luxuriant string-wrapped hiss and crackle of previous masterwerk Love You So, Delilah's latest single - Breathe - goes for a far more minimalist approach, all broken beats and tempting vocal melodies. It's haunting in the most seductive ways, a street lament of the most moving kind, and a wonderful showcase yet again for those incredible, mind-blowing vocals that really mark Delilah out. Rest be assured, her debut album, released in July, will be worth the wait.

Breathe is released on the 13th May.

[Official Video] Emin - Baby Get Higher

When we went to Emin's album playback a couple of weeks ago, Baby Get Higher was one of the tracks that really stood out for us - a mix of confident up-tempo hooks and heartfelt vocals, it's the kind of slick modern pop track that'd feel equally at home in the repertoire of The Wanted or Gary Barlow. As far as launching Emin to a new audience - whose back catalogue already features a plethora of best-selling albums in his native Azerbaijan - it's spot on, and there's a persistent drive to that piano riff that underpins the whole song. With a Radio 2 premiere already notched up, Baby Get Higher is shaping up very nicely to warm Emin to the hearts of the UK, especially when he takes to the Eurovision stage in May.

Baby Get Higher is released on the 21st May.

[Official Video] Lawson - When She Was Mine

The video for Lawson's rather excellent debut single When She Was Mine is out and we reckon it does a top-notch job of emphasising the whole 'band' aesthetic we were going on about so much in our review of their live show at Water Rats last week. Our favourite bit of the video has to be one minute in though when the girl of the song's title takes a massive swig of wine straight out of the bottle - nice one!

When She Was Mine is released on the 27th May.

[Official Video] Jessie J - Laserlight feat. David Guetta

Laserlight sort of makes more sense with it's video. Sort of... You see, as much as you might want to, you just can't shake that feeling that Laserlight is a poor man's version of that Guetta masterwork Titanium. While Jessie's previous single - Domino - might have been an unashamed aping of Katy Perry tropes, it at least fit her voice and energy well, whereas Titanium reduces Jessie to filling a generic club-diva placeholder role. Anyone could be singing, and the tracks morphs away into a formless entity that could just as easily be on the new Nicki Minaj album. Even with all of Jessie's visual prowess in the video and the flash of neon writ large on the big screen, Laserlight is only ever the song that goes half-way, leaving you teetering on the edge of the commercial club banger production line, with this as the hastily packaged together left-overs. As a recipe for chart success, Laserlight pushes all the right buttons, but as any significant artistic statement, it feels distinctly ill at ease.

Laserlight is released on the 14th May.

[Official Video] The Saturdays - 30 Days

When I’d finished my first watch-through of the new Saturdays video for 30 Days, I had to sit back for a moment and just think. There was one thought above all others, one lingering notion of ‘Wow – they’ve actually done it’. But done what? Well, as I addressed in detail in a previous post, for quite some time now, it feels like The Saturdays’ chart success has been impacted on by something I like to refer to as the boyfriend-stealer principle, a subconscious worry felt by girls towards girl-bands that are perhaps ‘too hot’ for them to fully associate themselves with on an empathic level. And so, something had to be done, the issue had to addressed, the overall ‘image’ of what The Saturdays are – and stand for – had to be ever so slightly changed to re-welcome all those disaffected fans back into the fold.

And this is what the video for 30 Days does. No space-age lakes of black water or impossibly-white office blocks for The Sats any more – no, the setting for the new video is a humble American diner where that wonderfully quaint component of modern life is taking place – speed dating. The girls could have so easily followed the futuristic rave-athon vibe of their previous videos, but by bringing 30 Days firmly back to earth and grounding it within the cramped confines of a food outlet, they completely shift the focus of what 30 Days is about. Listen to the track alone and it sounds like a natural successor to All Fired Up, but combined with incongruous setting of the diner video, 30 Days strikes a far deeper emotional chord.

The video feels like one long series of interconnected in-jokes, of which we, the viewer, are in on. The Sats speed-dating their way through a plethora of guys is custom-tuned to show the girls’ personalities at their best, and allows them to be more than just the unreachable Pop Princesses of their other recent videos, but something far more relatable to the average fan. A very pregnant Una even gets to show off her tummy (giving baby Aoife a very early introduction to the Sats world!) and if that doesn’t go some way to elicit empathy, then I don’t know what will. Equally, when Rochelle flashes her engagement ring around, there’s a wonderful blurring between The Saturdays of the fictional-fantasy world they inhabit in their songs and videos with The Saturdays as real women that have their own individual lives. Here, they’re remade as the girls out on the lash (albeit where the only drinks are brightly coloured milkshakes), larking about and pulling funny faces. It’s universal.

Those facial expressions – well, I could watch them all day long. But the key thing here is that these expressions show of the Sats’ personalities in a way the impassive HyperBabes of All Fired Up never could. They’re now the girls you could know, the girls you do know, the girls you one day might know – all wrapped up into a right royal knees up where, despite the apparent failings of the speed-dating, everyone ends up dancing about and going home as friends. 30 Days – both song and video – become a moment of communion, of shared enjoyment and a bringing together of friendship so perfectly wrought in the longing of the lyrics: ‘each second I’m here thinking what I want to do when I get to you... one month, four weeks, too many hours...’

Sure, it doesn’t have the instant neon-flair of the All Fired Up or Notorious videos, but in terms of marketing The Saturdays to who they now so crucially need to be marketed to, 30 Days is spot on.

[Official Video] Keane - Silenced By The Night

I don't want to call Keane's Silenced By The Night a return to form, since they've always been brilliant, but there's certainly that air of zeitgeist to the song that seems to resound with the sense of the 'return'. Its chorus is triumphant, soaring, anthemic in all the ways Keane's best songs are, and it also manages to deftly combine the clinical piano lines and pop ethos of Hopes & Fears with the touches of 80s flair that has so dominated their more recent work. It's a bringing together of the many various parts of Keane into a new, magnificent work that feels so wonderfully 'them'. We're glad you're back guys.

Silenced By The Night is released on the 30th April.

The Staves - The Motherlode

Sometimes you just need to be eased gently into the day with something wonderfully tender and soothing. In an age where all the stresses of modern life can seem all too much to cope with, when you just want to spend all day in the comfort and safety of bed, The Staves new single stands as a pretty good reason to get up for. Where The Motherlode works is in its essence of soft tranquillity that placates itself to your emotions like a seasoned professional of relaxation, delicate folky refrains nestling up into pretty vocal harmonies and an inherent sense of natural beauty. The Staves are set to tour the UK throughout April before heading out to the US to support Bon Iver.

The Motherlode is released on the 20th April.

[Official Video] Rita Ora feat. Tinie Tempah - R.I.P.

If there's one well connected up and coming female star to keep your eyes on right now, it's Rita Ora. From DJ Fresh to man of the moment Tinie Tempah, she's been plastering the airwaves with bite-size pop melodies keying effortlessly into a street-smart urban groove.

And with Tinie on board for her debut solo single R.I.P, it wouldn't surprise me if the track ended up as a shoe in for the No. 1 spot come it's May release date. Surfing a wave of Pendulum-esque D'n'B production (actually courtesy of supremos Chase & Status), the track feels energised with every ounce of the enthusiasm and drive you want from an artist making their big splash into the mainstream. And of course there's Rita's vocals - smoky and soulful in a way that feels infinitely more unique than your usual club vocalist types.

And therein lies the real power of R.I.P, it's ability to stand across both the raw force needed to send dancefloors across the UK into rapture, but with the slipstream pop hooks to take it that bit further to dominate on daytime playlists. And here, Rita Ora achieves both goals with impressive ease.

R.I.P. is released on the 7th May and can be pre-ordered here.

[Official Video] Sunday Girl - High & Low

Sunday Girl's High & Low, to put it simply, is amazing. The kind of upbeat life-affirming anthem to reverse the woes and worries of any given day. And now it has a video - although, disappointingly, it doesn't feature the absolutely stunning Jade Williams herself, more's the shame. Instead, given that the track is forming a centre-piece in StreetDance 2's promotional campaign, it features, yup... lots of streetdancing. But for us, as long-time Sunday Girl fans; well, we're just hoping the movie introduces her music to as many new people as possible, because that means all the more chance there'll be an actual Sunday Girl album, which we've been longing for ever since we saw her supporting Ellie Goulding on tour.

Nina Nesbitt - The Apple Tree

Nina Nesbitt is only seventeen, but going by how insanely talented she clearly is, you wouldn't think it. Delightful new single The Apple Tree - the title track from her forthcoming EP - is the kind of perfectly proportioned pop melody some artists go their whole careers without nailing, yet Nesbitt makes it sound second nature. There's the sense, amidst the breeze and youthful flair of the track, that for Nesbitt, songwriting is akin to breathing - so natural and organic a process she could do it in her sleep.

There's a sort of pretty, whimsical airiness to Nesbitt's music that recalls Ellie Goulding or a younger KT Tunstall. It's classic home-spun singer-songwriter fare, but with a delicate touch of campfire folksiness to it, and must crucially, real pop sensibility at the heart of it. No wonder then that she caught the attention of Example and Ed Sheeran, both of whom she's supported live. The cute DIY feel of The Apple Tree video really fits the track too, and even features a little guest appearance from Ed - he's oviously keen, and so are we!

The Apple Tree is released on the 7th May.

Morten Harket - Scared of Heights

When the lead singers of monumentally successful groups go solo, they usually try and make a discerned effort to move away from the sound of their parent band - but in Morten Harket's case, new single Scared of Heights is about as close to the revitalised trademark 21st century a-Ha sound as you can get. And in a way, that's what we like most about it. The song plays to Harket's strengths, taking that ethereal, angelic voice to all the sweeping peaks of epiphany he's done so well for the past 30 years or so. It's up-tempo, there's some lovely strings, and in its general spirit and airy lightness, it feels far more akin to Lifelines or Analogue than the heavier synth sounds of Foot Of The Mountain. And perhaps most crucially, it sounds like a big radio single, the kind of thing to really front an album campaign and lead it onward to proper chart success. A song this good certainly deserves it.

Scared of Heights is released on the 10th April and can be pre-ordered here.

[Official Video] Beatrice Eli - The Conqueror

We reviewed Beatrice Eli's glacial synth anthem The Conqueror back in November last year and now it's got a video to go with it - and quite frankly, we want to dive right into it in much the same way we want to wrap ourselves up in the song and never emerge.

With its snow-flecked depiction of the endless urban sprawl of tower-blocks and uniform concrete, the video paints a wild, almost untamed world of the council flat recast as fantasy landscape, which all seems very much in keeping with the twinkling, effervescent mood of the song itself.

It's that chorus - just one of those unashamed 'YES' moments where a pop song crystalises into something, which for a few seconds, is all that matters. For just that snatch of a moment, we're caught in that limbo with The Conqueror, and it's heavenly.

Madonna - Girl Gone Wild [Official Video]

So, here's the rundown. We love MDNA, but of all the tracks, Girl Gone Wild certainly feels like one of the least adventurous - a kind of Madonna by the numbers, if you will.

But throw the Voguey black-and-white video into the mix and somehow, it instantly improves in appeal. Whereas before it felt like a rather bog standard dance number, a formless entry into the current panoply of other club chart stuff awash in the charts, now it feels like a genuine part of Madonna's ouevre as a whole.

It also feels even more like something off Confessions now, which is a very good thing indeed.

And most of all, the video, like Madonna always does when she's at her best, makes you absolutely reconsider what it means to be an artist of her age in the industry. Indeed, Girl Gone Wild feels like the work of some starlet twice Madge's years, and that, more than anything is evidence of the vitality at the of both it and MDNA.

Even the ample hip thrusting doesn't put us off this one.

Cover Drive - Sparks [Official Video]

We reckon Cover Drive's excellent new single Sparks is going to be one of the biggest pop tunes of the coming months, and to boot, it's now got a suitably glossy video to go with it too. Positioning the band as the proper mega-stars in ascendance they are very much on the cusp of becoming, the video has all the sleek, styled confidence of the track itself and frankly makes us want to join the Cover Drive 'gang'. We wonder if they'll let us hang out with them?