The quality of The Saturdays ' music output pretty much nose-dived to shit levels and has stayed that way after their promising first album, so it's disheartening to see that "30 Days," the lead single off the stripper pack's upcoming fourth album, charted higher this week in the UK ( #7 ) than new Scissor Sisters jam "Only The Horses" ( #12 ). Yeah, I know — the Internet has collectively torn the Calvin Harris -produced "Only The Horses" to pieces. But you can all just kiss my classy butt. This is the Scissters' best single in ages, if you ask me, and it ...

It's impossible to conceive of any real Outsider list which doesn't include Briggs">Anne Briggs . A female singer in a folk world dominated by masculine ideals, Briggs">Anne Briggs stood out by combining incredible artistry with a genuine maverick streak. Continually refusing to play the game, the English singer fused her life and her art to create something which still inspires - more than forty years after she turned her back on the folk world for good. No meagre talent himself, James Yorkston has long spoken of his appreciation for Briggs' work. Chatting to ClashMusic, we allowed him the ...

a-ha “Take On Me” Mondays. The best of days. It is only on a Monday that you can speed your way over to the bus stop and make it just in time to wave it, and its lovely passengers goodbye. It is only on a Monday that you can finally dye your expensive pair of slacks with that very specific tinge of coffee brown you can only attain with, well, a freshly brewed cup of steaming hot coffee. It is only on a Monday that you can draft up a 1,000 word post, and lose it to a simple ...

Frankie Rose is breaking out on her own. This Brooklyn legend – and former member of Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls, no less – has ditched the backing band and cast off the girl-group/feedback fuzz of old to embrace something a little more cosmic – resulting in one of the most thrilling records of the year so far. Ethereal and blissed-out, ‘Interstellar’ sees Rose take full creative control to offer us angelic chorales, candy-floss soundscapes and a deceptively expansive sound. Clash met up with the charming Rose to discuss success, musical evolution and why sometimes it pays to have ...

Even though Sweden often gets most of the attention for producing great new pop, neighboring Norway has been a very fertile breeding ground for exciting pop music as well. From Annie to Royksopp, and from A-ha to Blackroom, Norway has...

photo: Natascha Narvaez Indie New Wave pop quintet Jetsi Kain offer their first single I'm In Control as a free download. Based in Copenhagen they are part of the pop boom that is currently happening in Denmark. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour blew up and cult favorites Snake & Jet's Amazing Bullit Band will release their sophomore album soon. Jetsi Kain are releasing their Caspar Hesselhager and Aske Bode produced album later this year. I'm In Control has the vocal gloss of A-ha mixed with hints of the keyboard sound of Madness. Nothing special, but catchy as Hell - it ...

After watching last night’s performance episode of American Idol, we were pleased to find two really awesome standouts in the competition. That “a-ha” moment came first when we saw Phillip Phillips sing. It came once more during the show when Elise Testone took to the stage to belt out some Led Zeppelin. In case you’ve [...]

For the introduction to this month’s Rapture & Verse , we need one of those gristly, blockbuster film voiceovers, because Naba Napalm...is...‘The Love Bullet’. Which may sound like a soft porn superhero follow-up to 2008’s ‘Underwater Aqualung’, but it won’t have many albums beating it for bassy funk and serious neck snaps with lyrical, stilted psychosis like a UK Kool Keith or a Channel Live/Pharoahe Monch/Ty lean. Touted as a homegrown pioneer but seemingly always a distance away from column inches as he shifts to and from the US East Coast, pick up what comes with an aim sure and true. While on home shores and with cross-pollination running wild, bass embracer Zed Bias has teamed with Rodney P and Fallacy for a potentially bombastic album as Sleepin’ Giantz , with opening act ‘Badungdeng’ setting carnival floats in its sights as it hula-hoops out of speakers. Foreign Beggars continue to show they’ll freak and flagellate any beat, smashing into the turntable tornado of DJ Kentaro for a dubstep demolition derby ‘Step In’, and Aspects get it on with Akira Kiteshi for the slurpy ‘Yes Please’. Then there’s Liverpool’s Bang On!, who’s ‘punk-donk-dub-hip-hop’ (his words, not ours) will create a mosphit filled with 5950s. ‘Got It’ and ‘Munnys’ are bracing Brit-rap knuckle-crackers done in seething Scouse, ‘No Lifts No Ladders’ is a heavily sedated inverse, within a chain of fierce slingshots going for multiple hostile takeovers. It’s called ‘[Sic]’, and is as it says. Straighter shooting comes from Caxton Press, a sextet of redtop rebels with a with-us-or-against-us agenda and whose ‘Shame the Devil’ LP aims to make Satan’s cheeks redder than normal. Boom-bap truth seekers lined with an air of valour, they only know one movement – left, right and forward. Homeboy Sandman’s ‘Chimera’ EP is a head-cleaning half dozen of straight-shooting, radar-skimming raps lying in wait. What the six tracker may lack in perceived personality, the NY rhymer is unafraid of taking his time so the points he makes are indisputable (that is until ‘Hold You Head’ ups into a Drake-ish double-time), with Paul White helping out on the boards twice over. A similarly sized snifter from the JJ Doom confederation has MF Doom and Jneiro Jarel smelting ‘Key to the Kuffs’, a best of both worlds face-off as the pair pool their woozy, wigged out resources and part-time Cockney impersonations (‘Gov’Nor’). The full-length should be a delectable demonstration of hip-hop saying something without really saying anything, riddled with sample-stuffed psychedelics. Following International Women’s Day, TheeSatisfaction’s boho-soul and hip-hop of ‘awE naturalE’ stands up. With some unexpected psychedelic washes making their way through and Shabazz Palaces’ Palaceer Lazaro popping in, it’s lushly produced and with plenty of personality from Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White, harnessing elements of Ursula Rucker meets Sarah Jones meets Jean Grae meets Floetry. It might be a bit too left of centre or poetry slam for some, but it’s worth 30 minutes of time in the sun at the very least, and though they come off forthright and independent, egos play no part. Nicki Minaj is heading for London, Birmingham and Manchester towards the end of June, Kreayshawn is prepping debut album ‘Something About Kreay’, and features on the V Nasty mixtape ‘Doin’ Number$’. Well on her way to baddest bitchdom, Nasty’s shrill slang creation (‘Swobbin’) reps the ‘white girl mob’ and blows toxic bubblegum in a crowded circle of guests, with a series of callously singsong hooks over a booming selection of the Southern frazzled. Happy Mother’s Day. And if Stooshe’s ‘Love Me’ is a guilty pleasure of yours, sneak a peep at Lioness, A Dot and RoxXxann playing pass the mic like it’s a game of spin the bottle on the remix. After time out of the limelight that you’d put down to being a Shady/Aftermath low risk makeweight, Obie Trice’s new LP ‘Bottoms Up’ ain’t too bad. Lots of chest banging over piano-thumping beats from the non-techno listener with crossover routes out (that in fairness aren’t soft and sappy – real name no gimmicks indeed), if you don’t really remember ‘Cheers’ but do remember the style of when G-Unit exploded and Eminem kept hogging the boards, you should get the idea pretty quickly. Talking of the Unit, Young Buck recently escaped unscathed from an 11-shot drive-by; almost an upturn in fortunes given his recent financial and legal problems. Forget all this upfront stuff though, it’s been reissue and dust-off central over at Traffic. Available to pore over are Mantronix’s electro-B-boy lab report ‘King of the Beats’ that’s “better than $100 leather”, and Biz Markie’s ‘The Biz Never Sleeps’, featuring the classic, proto-Tracy Jordan love jam ‘Just A Friend’. Then there’s Boogie Down Production’s ‘South Bronx Teachings’, Del The Funkee Homosapien’s ‘I Wish My Brother George Was Here’, Kool G. Rap & DJ ...

*She Makes War *releases her second album ’Little Battles’ on April 9th *She Makes War* is the gloom-pop solo project of Laura Kidd – multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and digital polymath. Having graced stages across the world playing bass and singing for *Tricky, A-Ha, I Blame Coco, The...

Check this radio stream of new single Lightning by former A-ha frontman Morten Harket . As it was co-written with Joakim and Martin of Kent I sort of expected it to be fab...not really convinced that it is...

OSLO, Norway - It's not the face of North Korea the world is used to: five young musicians adding a playful...

These North Korean accordionists cover the classic A-ha hit “Take On Me”. It is surprisingly good

The Los Angeles Times brings word of this pretty amazing little video from Seoul, North Korea (you know, that this guy place) of five prodigious accordionists covering that most ‘80s of pop hits, A-Ha’s “Take On Me”... In isolated North Korea, where most citizens have never heard of Michael Jackson and where Western culture is seen as decadent filth, the 90-second video is innocent and even refreshing. The five musicians, three men and two women, sit in a line facing the camera in a large wood-floored room, framed by a painting of a winter scene and a plastic four-foot-tall ...

Apparatjik is a European rock supergroup that boasts members of Coldplay, A-Ha, and Mew and which sounds way more twinkly and electronic than that list of names might lead you to think. They’ll release their second album Square Peg In A Round Hole later this month, and it features a team-up with superstar rap producer [...]

Filed under: News , New Music Andreas Meichsner The supergroup collective known as Apparatjik has always done things its own way. They released their second album, 'Square Peg in a Round Hole,' to the public after spearheading an initiative to plant 1,000 trees around the world. The members -- Magne Furuholmen ( A-Ha ), Guy Berryman ( Coldplay ), Jonas Bjerre ( MEW ) and producer Martin Terefe -- apply this ethos of a worldwide community to their songwriting as well. "Apparatjik works in cells around the world as an open platform for collaborations," bassist Berryman tells Spinner.