The debut album by Salford's The Ting Tings comes hot on the heels of their No. 1 single "That's Not My Name", a nugget of pop gold that comes on like a genetic splicing of Toni Basil's "Micky" and The Knack's "My Sharona". The bulk of We Started Nothing follows a similar formula, navigating a path between the smart, angular indie of CSS, Bonde Do Role, et al and the pop mainstream. Here and there, they pull it off perfectly: the stutter-rap of "Fruit Machine" sees vocalist Katie White leading on some poor sap with sultry charisma and lip-gloss sass, while the excellent "Shut Up and Let Me Go" is snappy dance-punk in the spirit of Blondie's "Rapture" or Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love". Elsewhere, they branch out with mixed results. "We Walk" builds from quiet flourishes of piano into a surprisingly steely manifesto: "Smash the rest up/Burn it down/Put us in the corner cause we're into ideas", sneers White. Rather less good is "Traffic Light", a light, jazzy number that employs a number of somewhat forced driving metaphors to describe a relationship hit the skids. Still, it's a debut with promise, and a string of good singles is nothing to be sniffed at. -Louis Pattison.

Considered by many to be the Material Girl's most mature effort of the 1980s, Like a Prayer upped the ante of controversy with its gospel-infused title track and the singer's emotional confessions throughout. It also unveiled the hit "Express Yourself", which ushered in the era of Madonna as a "stainless steel sexual icon". Musically, Prayer showcased her burgeoning songwriting prowess, with the beautiful "Oh Father" and the perky pop of "Cherish". Besides a throw-away collaboration with Prince ("This Is Not a Love Song"), the album stands as one of her strongest works, eschewing the strong dance beat influences from her past-she saved that for the remixes-and concentrating instead on melody and structure. Like a Prayer also gave a hint of things to come with the delightful "Dear Jessie" displaying a maternal side worthy of her name. -Steve Gdula.

Truthfully it's been some time since Air's Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunkel could truthfully be said to be pop musicians, but their fourth album Pocket Symphony journeys further from the pop firmament than ever before. Slow, stately songs built around the tick of electronic drums, the trill of vintage synthesisers, and somewhat unexpectedly, some traditional Japanese instruments - the koto, a Japanese floor harp, and the banjo-like shamisen - it's an album apparently more concerned with texture and mood than crafting catchy pop fromage. Certainly, it often does it well: 'Mayfair Song' locks into a dazed, lightly cosmic groove oddly reminiscent of Talk Talk circa Spirit Of Eden, all purposeful piano and moody, drifting bass, while the blissful 'Photograph' sees angelic vocals submerged within a tide of shimmering strings and trilling chimes. For the most part, vocals are fairly sparse, but there are two guest spots: the first from Jarvis Cocker, who murmurs like Scott Walker with a sore head through 'Hell Of A Party', and the second from The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, who invests 'Somewhere Between Waking And Sleeping' with an impressive melancholy soul. At first, it sounds slight, but carry Pocket Symphony with you, and feel it slowly work its magic. -Louis Pattison.

Motion, the debut album from DJ Jason Swinscoe's Cinematic Orchestra, is a future jazz classic. Each track perfectly marries mood and substance, mixing shuffling percussion and galloping drum breaks with chilled pianos, melancholy strings and live jazz horns. Heavy acoustic basslines mingle with samples of old blues singers and twinkly electric piano solos. It's a dark, late night brew that conjures up images of smoke-filled jazz clubs and dimly lit concert halls. But this is no exercise in jazz pastiche-­Swinscoe genuinely loves the genre, and it shows. On Motion, he never slips into pointless jazz noodling opting instead for rolling breakbeats, moody soundtrack sounds and deft horn touches. Consequently, Motion is a brilliant album of dark, soundtrack jazz that'll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. -Matt Anniss.

In every sense of the word Give Up, the debut album from American Electro beatniks the Postal Service is a remarkable record. Born of a chance meeting between Ben Gibbard, singer of Seattle indie-rockers Death Cab for Cutie and LA resident and Dntel lynch-pin Jimmy Tamborello, and written and recorded by post-hence the name the Postal Service-it's an inspired, if unlikely, marriage of lo-fi innocence and hi-tech beauty. Gibbard's voice is filled with the insecure questioning normally restricted to recently dumped singers in emo bands. Tamborello's clicks, bleeps, analogue murmurs and eerie scraps are the stuff of inaccessible bedroom electronica. Together though, they find a sensual middle ground where stories of jilted lovers and fragile desires softly prick the emotions on a tidal wave of otherworldly synthetic sounds. "The District Sleeps Alone", with its tripping beats, bittersweet computer strings and tragically uplifting hook is melancholy at its most tender. "Sleeping In" is a joyously sunny daydream; a naïve vision of how good the world could be. And everything else falls somewhere between the two-equal parts heartbreak and hope, to form a strange and wonderful dimension where electro-pop has a soul. -Dan Gennoe.

A quintessential 1980s pop artifact, Madonna's third album was a huge musical leap forward and ranks with Like a Prayer and Ray of Light in the top echelon of her works. Only the title track (a bit too obviously a 60s girl-group homage) and the fine-but-nothing-special "Jimmy Jimmy" slightly lower the quality bar. Most of the songs share a jittery dance-pop sound, edgy, distracted, and nerve- jangling but simultaneously invigorating and exhilarating and almost dangerously giddy-a perfect soundtrack for the mid-1980s. Highlights include the hedonist's credo of "Where's the Party", the subtle and pretty Latin pastiche "La Isla Bonita", and, towering above all, three stunning mega-hits. "Papa Don't Preach", with its gorgeous pseudo-classical strings intro, is a sumptuous airwaves banquet, as Madonna wrestles with the have-the-baby-or-give-it-up dilemma (abortion's not in the picture) in newly gritty tones. "Open Your Heart"'s marriage of jitter-pop and wistful melody underscores the singer's yearning but forceful stance ("You better open your heart to me, buster"). And "Live to Tell" is a riveting ballad, lushly melodic yet spare and haunting-a place, as the song says, where beauty lives. -Ken Barnes.

Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond had their first massive smash hit as the Timelords ("Doctoring the House") and also scored hits as the Jams. So by the time they came up with tracks like "3AM Eternal" and the blaring-horn-a-thon that was "What Time Is Love?" (both from The White Room), they were already well versed in writing pop songs. This is a dance album of sorts, but it is very tongue-in-cheek and has a distinctly commercial edge. The pair were notorious jokers-the back cover shows them clutching sheep to their chests-and after managing to rule the charts they disbanded and turned their back on the industry completely. Their disdain for the music business comes through in their over-the-top futurism and relentless air horn blasting, both of which are an acquired taste and quite nauseating after a while. Aside from the singles mentioned above, White Room also contains the soulful "Make It Rain", the surprisingly subdued "Church of the KLF", some Scottish poetry on "Build a Fire" and unforgivably crass use of some King Tubby trumpet on the dire "No More Tears". It's hailed as a classic, but don't believe the hype. -Paul Sullivan.

Trent Reznor has always been a one-trick-pony, but it's a damn good trick: sunny melodies filtered through ferocious electronics. Unfortunately, the trick's impact was often watered down by a tendency toward petulance and self-absorption. Still, almost six years after NIN's last release, The Fragile, the trick itself has lost none of its Teen-Beat-from-hell appeal. With Teeth blisters from the start with "All the Love in the World," and tracks like "The Collector" take full advantage of Dave Grohl's sledgehammer drumming. Reznor stretches occasionally, trying out different tactics, from crunchy, overtly commercial rave-ups ("The Hand That Feeds") to borderline New Wave ("Only"). But Teeth isn't about stretching. It's about doing the same trick, only better, with less clutter and more bite. By neatly distilling the sparseness of Pretty Hate Machine with Downward Spiral-style density, it ends up being the most focused record in the NIN catalogue. -Matthew Cooke.

The desire to seek culture and tradition from outside one's own backyard to influence your art and music is nothing new-from The Beatles through Marc Bolan, Paul Simon and up to Damon Albarn with his Mali Music, evidence is rife even in the mainstream. The only problem for M. I. A (aka London born Maya Arulpragasam) is that her backyard was flung far and wide in the first instance, growing up as she did in the UK, India and Sri Lanka-which may go some way to explaining the bewildering, fragrant, intoxicating mesh of sounds, rhythms and head-on sonic clashes that surge willfully throughout her second album, Kala-the result of her own personal voyage of artistic discovery. She's absorbed, in addition to her own eclectic electro beginnings, aboriginal hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, Liberian and Trinidadian influences, also finding the time to work with Timbaland (not nearly, incidentally, the highlight of the record). On "Mango Pickle Down River" she sounds like Missy Elliot shuffling in a didgeridoo with a rapping children's choir she picked up somewhere en route, while the fittingly titled "World Town" is grime arriving on an asteroid during a tribal ceremony with sound effects ranging from a cocked gun to apparent digitized bagpipes. Considering how out-of-this-world-original M. I. A's Mercury-nominated debut Arular was it is a rare delight that she's progressed with such resolute surefootedness, losing none of her intrigue. You've got a lot of miles to cover to catch her up, let's put it that way. [+]

In 2006, Danger Mouse is King Midas of the music world. He has an uncanny knack for creating jagged, dense, frenzied beats and odd, eerie, vivid soundscapes that never compromise the music's natural flow. Meanwhile, rapper and singer Cee-Lo, a veteran of Atlanta's Dirty South scene, has never been one to be constrained by hip-hop conventions, and is a willing partner in adventure. The result is an intrepid psychedelic blend of pop, hip-hop, soul, and rock that consistently challenges and delights. It's no wonder that "Crazy," with its modest riff, irresistible hook, and disarming opening line ("I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind") became a worldwide Internet sensation a full six months before the official release of St. Elsewhere. But that relatively simple soul-pop gem is the tamest track on this wide-ranging, often dark and introspective collaboration. (In fact, the duo considers Gnarls Barkley to be a wholly new creation, as opposed to a collaboration of existing artists. ) "Everybody is somebody, but nobody wants to be themselves," Cee-Lo croons on "Who Cares?" He and Danger Mouse try very hard not to be their old selves as they creatively and confidently break down boundaries, but the brilliant cores of their musical personae-Cee-Lo's eccentric spiritual soul man and Danger's bold sonic explorer-remain. -Marc Greilsamer.