It doesn't matter if you liked Rood or not, if you've ever liked a ballad in your whole life you should download this because it's one of my favourite ballads of all time and it could be yours too! It's a traditional style pop ballad, but it does everything pop ballads should do perfectly, every word and sound fitting just right with plenty of drama and excellent singing. It's in Dutch but that only adds a uniqueness which makes it all the more spectacular, and the fact that they still manage to put their emotions across so well just shows what ace pop stars these two are.

I've posted several songs in the past from Kim-Lian's brilliant first album, and now she's back with a new single from a new album with a new sound and new idols - Vanilla Ninja! Road To Heaven sounds like several of the Ninjas' songs, but a bit lighter/poppier and really really ace. It seems like it's doing pretty well in Holland, where she's from, and although there's no news of an album yet I'm looking forward to hearing it when it comes out. If you remember Kim-Lian releasing a single in the UK last year, don't be put off if you didn't like it cos not only was that her least ace song but she has totally grown up since then into a proper pop star, not just for kids but for every pop fan!

One of the musical discoveries that's helped me survive my terrible exam ordeal (all over now and I don't think I failed anything, at least - it's the revision I hate most) is this one by Camera Obscura. It came out a few weeks ago as a single, but I ignored it since I hadn't thought much of the music the band had done previously, until I read that the video was good so I looked it up on YouTube and the rumours were true - not only is the video totally ace but so is the song. I love it! I still don't think I'll be buying any of their albums any time soon, but the fact that they made this lovely piece of musical magic is plenty enough for me to write their names in my good books in permanent marker.

If, like me, you like Le Tigre but wish their songs were a bit more poptastic (girl power is no use if it hurts your ears), this band may be exactly what you're waiting for. The Dollyrots are quite a rocky band, citing the Ramones and The Pixies as influences, but out of the three songs on their MySpace two are insanely catchy (and not even exaggerating) masterpieces of pop, one being the I-would-sing-along-but-I-can't-keep-up anthem New College and the other and best of all being this track called Wreckage. Honestly, if you have any taste at all you must download this cos you will LOVE IT! (ps. thanks to Cure For Bedbugs for the tip-off)

I apologise for the lack of posts here recently, but it's not for a lack of songs to post - in fact I've got a whole list of them ready for when I have time, but at the moment I'm consumed with A-level exams. I've got the toughest ones out of the way now so I've allowed myself some time for Internetting, and it has to be spent updating my much-loved blogs. One of the CDs that has been making revision a little more bearable is a new one I got off CD-Wow this week, the album by the West End Girls. As you'll either know or have guessed by now, they're a young female tribute band to the Pet Shop Boys! Tribute bands aren't usually the source of great albums but the WEGs are Swedish and have accordingly made the PSBs classics sound like ace girly electro-pop singles that fit very nicely into the kind of pop music coming out of Sweden at the moment, for example that of Cat 5, BWO and the Similou (who has the single of the week on Radio 1 last week - hooray!). The album is very respectful to the originals while allowing the girls to make the songs their own, and since I wasn't overly familiar with all the songs they've done, I can treat them as new songs in their own right instead of just covers, and in that sense they are fantastic, showing what great songwriters the PSBs were - I'm sure Neil and Chris will be very proud when they hear this. In fact, I think they should invite the girls to support them at their future live shows! This song is really sad but lovely, with a guitar beginning which makes it different to the usual electro-sound of the Pet Shop Boys and of course the West End Girls.

In five minutes this song goes through emotive balladry, frantic classical, acetastic Eurodance, Riverdance and a combination of all these things, and all in Dutch! It's every bit as mad and brilliant as that description suggests, and when you take into account that 39-year-old Marco is one of Holland's biggest pop stars, you'll soon be booking your holidays there, or at least Googling Dutch online radio stations. You may not be sure about this song in the first few minutes but listen to the end and I'm sure you'll be left with a great big grin on your face. Why wasn't this their Eurovision entry? I would have voted for it!

How exciting! You can now subscribe to Into The Groove as a podcast - or at least I think you can. If you have one of those clever podcast downloading programmes please put in http://feeds.feedburner.com/poptasticuk and tell me if it works. Thank you!

I'm not sure if mentioning a burrito once quite warrants the song being known as The Burrito Song, but at least you won't forget it. Hawaiian Hoku was one of the first popstars I heard of through the Internet, in the olden days when I only had dial-up and it took so long to download a song that you had to listen to the clip of it on Amazon several times to decide whether you loved it enough. I never loved any of Hoku's songs quite enough, but I guess either the clip of this one (which I discovered only recently when listening to the Poptastic station I made on Pandora) was unrepresentative or I just never heard it cos this is actually a really great and very cute song. The verses kind of remind me of Tom's Diner and the chorus is pretty catchy, also kind of reminding me of B*Witched's song Jump Down. There is a fittingly cute video which you can watch here.

The Sounds are a trendy Swedish band who are very popular at home and also have had some success in the USA. They've been around for quite a while now but only released 2 albums and this song was on neither, but from what I can tell was released as a demo in 2001. I first heard it on the soundtrack of the ace German film Große Mädchen Weinen Nicht (Big Girls Don't Cry), on which it fit very well as it focusses on two teenage girls whose lives have taken rather disastrous turns. Although none of the band were teenagers when it was released, the song certainly has the spirit of a teenager complaining about how rubbish it can be sometimes at this age, but it also has a positive sense with the lyrics "We're the survivors". I won't tell you whether that fits the film cos then there'll be no point in you watching it!

I can't remember where I got this song from, but it came on my mp3 player the other day and I just loved it. Turns out they're a Danish group, 4 men with a female singer named Randi, who could be said to sound like Robyn, although the music itself is more comparable to The Cardigans. It's not as poppy as much of the music I post here, but a few listens and it's as catchy as any of them and really lovely to listen to. They don't seem to be particularly famous anywhere, although they've played gigs in the UK as well as Denmark, so lets hope they find success somewhere soon!