Singles and Downloads 7

Mark Ronson & The Business Intl, The Bike Song (Sony Music)

There are ways and ways to make novelty retro-pop. Mark Ronson, for example, has absolutely nailed it here. This song, with its almost unbearably sunny Lovin' Spoonful-styled harmony vocals slathered over an early-Nineties pop-hip-hop breakbeat with jaunty raps from Spank Rock, should be awful – should be so calculatedly faux-naif it makes you hurl – but it's just done with so much invention, so much out-and-out glee and such great hooks that it's completely irresistible and delicious.

Two entirely demented remixes from transatlantic future-reggae duo Major Lazer and London underground house producer Lil Silva help. A glorious confection. (JM)

• Find The Bike Song on Amazon
• Read theartsdesk review of Mark Ronson & The Business Intl

Cee-Lo Green, Forget You (aka F*ck You) (Warner Music)

And then there is novelty retro-pop done badly. Cee-Lo Green, the frontman of Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley, has one of the greatest voices in modern music; with rich veins of church and blues running through it, its balance of power and sensitivity can be absolutely mindblowing. So it's nothing less than a tragedy to see him performing his recent kitsch-overload stage shows with Robert Palmer-styled girl backing band flicking their hair annoyingly throughout, or to hear him do this naff, Sixties-soul-by-numbers joke song designed for drunken chant-alongs. Maybe he just wants to escape being known as 'the guy that sings "Crazy"', but this song is likely to be even more of an albatross. Sad. (JM)

• Find Forget You on Amazon

Esben And The Witch, Marching Song EP (Matador)

The video for "Marching Song" is quite something, a disturbing and original piece with the three members of the band slowly... well, we live in the digital age so why don't you check it out below rather than me waffling on about it. Brighton three-piece Esben And The Witch, however, are certainly far from a gimmick band. They may be relentlessly desolate but they also have a power that resides somewhere between US experimental indie band LIARS and the more gothic end of 4AD Records' roster in the 1980s. The three songs on this EP vary in tone but revel in an all-encompassing mood rather than hummable songs. Psyched blurry shoegaze guitar makes its presence felt, particularly on the epic nine-minute "Souvenirs", but decorative electronic swirls and textures are just as dominant. There's a sense of bleak danger to Esben And The Witch's work, an edge of doomed hopelessness that makes the angst of bands such as My Chemical Romance look about as dejected as Spongebob Squarepants. (THG)

• Find Marching Song EP on HMV

Watch the video for Esben And The Witch's "Marching Song":

Idiot Glee, All Packed Up/Don't Drink The Water (Moshi Moshi)

When soul music was in the process of being born in the late Fifties and early Sixties it had a peculiarly spooked sound. Sam Cooke and others combined gospel singing with rhythm and blues, doo-wop and secular lyrical concerns yet the results had a fuzzy otherworldliness unlike any of the component parts. Film directors from Martin Scorcese to David Lynch have noticed this and used such music to brilliant effect, and now Idiot Glee - a 22-year-old Kentuckian called James Friley - has somehow tuned into that very vibe. Apparently his music was inspired by listening endlessly to The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and you can hear that, but both these handsome melancholy slowies, recorded over basic loops of keyboard and guitar, primarily recall haunted productions from America's Deep South half a century ago, lost campfire sounds that echo with mild uncanny. (THG)

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Flying Lotus, Pattern+Grid World EP (WARP)

Psychedelic beatsmith – and nephew of Alice Coltrane – Steven Ellison's latest album Cosmogramma is an astounding, but incredibly dense and involved piece of work. Likewise his live band Infinity specialise in intricately meshed structures. Here he sounds like he's cutting loose rather more: the rhythms and synth lines may be complex, but they fly freely and are delivered with an easy, mischievous wit. From the Bontempi drum and bass of “Kill Your Co-Workers” through the playschool voodoo sketch “Time Vampires” and the melting P-Funk “Camera Day” to the demented acid crunch of “Physics for Everyone!”, it's great to hear a mind normally so fiercely focused and applied on record cutting loose in such ridiculous fashion. (JM)

• Find Pattern+Grid World EP on Amazon

Alloy Ark, To, The Bottom of The Sea EP (NROne)

From Tallulah Gosh to Camera Obscura, there's a strand of indie music that's unashamedly twee, bands for whom singing in ickle girl voices and embracing child-like themes is the raison d'être. It's an acquired taste, to say the least, and there's certainly a touch of this about teenage Norfolk duo Alloy Ark. However, where most such bands also fetishise jangling Sixties-style guitars, singer Danielle Appaddoo and instrumentalist Doug Broadbent cook up jolly numbers based around the piano with a dab of trumpet here and there. They dive back into pre-rock'n'roll traditions of songwriting, jazz-age stylings and even tints of the stage musical. Appadoo's voice is distilled girly sweetness and the four songs on this EP, about love, sailors and fairytales, invite the listener into Alloy Ark's gentle, whimsically poetic and impressively fully formed musical world. (THG)

• Find To, The Bottom of The Sea EP on Amazon

Paris Suit Yourself, Craig Machinsky (Big Dada)

As well as the likes of Roots Manuva and Wiley, Ninja Tune's hip-hop sub-label Big Dada has been home to some truly freakish music. They played host to both Busdriver and Infinite Livez, outfits whose unhinged take on rap music made listeners goggle in disbelief. This time they go one better, for Paris Suit Yourself cannot be counted as hip hop at all. Over a piano-based percussive jazz assault, a man who sounds like the lead singer of long defunct Viking biker rockers The Leather Nun holds forth about racial issues, meanwhile a horror film harpy chorus intones sinisterly in the background. Not sure I even like it but it's determinedly not like anything else I've heard lately, a rare thing. Also, news just through - Mark E Smith has invited them to support The Fall on a brief UK tour this autumn. That's got to be good, right? Oh, and who is Craig Machinsky? (THG)

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Kito, Kito EP (Disfigured Dubz)

If evidence were needed about how far dubstep has grown from its localised, rather male-dominated origins it's here in these four tracks of splendidly sophisticated work from young female Australian singer/producer Kito. The rhythms and harmonies are those of US R&B, but there is an edge to it that feels post-punk, with even a tiny hint of Siouxsie Sioux; the production that holds it all together, though, is utterly futuristic, the high-definition gloss of its structures practically vertiginous in their human impossibility. (JM)

• Find Kito EP on Boomkat

Eskmo, Cloudlight (Ninja Tune)

And talking of high-definition gloss in electronic music, this single from Californian producer Eskmo is every bit as gleaming and complex as the Kito, but rather than dubstep and R&B it takes its rhythmic cues from hip hop and its harmonic structures resemble nothing so much as a kind of virtual reality progressive rock. It is intensely narcotic in the best possible sense, like being invited into someone else's flying dream. Absolutely lush in every way. (JM)

• Find Cloudlight on Amazon

Watch the video for "Cloudlight" by Eskmo:

Paper Crows, Stand Alight (Future Cut)

When I first caught wind of dubstep the only way I imagined it might cross over was as backing to a female singer, in the manner that, say, Kosheen adapted a contemporary sound (drum and bass in their case) and took it into the charts. Boy, was I wrong about that. Dubstep is everywhere in an almost uncut form, if often sugared with vocoder vocals and electro-pop arrangements. Paper Crows, however, adhere to my initial misguided notions. Frontwoman Emma Panas sings a downtempo number that would once have fallen under the trip-hop soul banner but her partner Duncan McDougall adds great waves of dubstep bass and hulking electronic percussion. Mournful, solid and enjoyable rather than flat-out brilliant, "Stand Alight", nonetheless, announces the possible arrival of an alternative pop talent. (THG)

• Contact Paper Crows and listen to Stand Alight via Facebook

Mohombi, Bumpy Ride (2101/Universal)

Some songs are just made to irritate. Never mind famous old no-no's like "The Birdy Song" and "Agadoo", there's much more recent fare - Iyaz's "Replay" smash of earlier this year, for example. You know it, even if you think you don't; it's the one that starts, "Shawty's like a memory in my head," and whose chorus concludes, "It's like my iPhone's stuck on replay-ay-ay-ay," all sung in a voice that sounds like a demon vocoder worm of jollity skewering its way into your limbic system. Well, there's a new kid on the block. I guarantee you Mohombi will be ubiquitous by next week or, if you go to the wrong places on holiday, for a couple of decades. Congolese-Swedish singer Mohombi Moupondo has mustered a horrifically catchy amalgam of Euro-dross and ersatz Caribbean which will sell a billion. Actually, it's the work of producer Red One who's behind some of Lady Gaga's finest moments, but "Bumpy Ride" reminds that he has no aesthetic boundaries and is equally at home working with Enrique Iglesias. It's the opening salvo of his new label 2101 which doesn't bode well for radio-listening music lovers. Truth to tell, though, we all overreact; these songs aren't even aimed at grown-ups, they're aimed at children aged eight to 12, so becoming irate about them is like getting in a tizz because "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a simplistic take on astronomy. That last sentence may be true but as soon as I hear it - "I wanna boom-bang-bang widya body-oh/We gonna rough it up before we take it slow" - my eye starts twitching like Herbert Lom in the old Pink Panther films. (THG)

• Find Bumpy Ride on Amazon