I bought the brand new BWO album a few days ago and haven't had that much chance to listen to it yet, but I thought I'd post one of the songs that stood out to me straight away. It's one of the more dancey songs on the album and extremely catchy - I could have sung along to the song on the first listen. Overall I'm very impressed with the CD so far, although of course this is extremely unsurprising considering I adore this band. Expect a proper review on Dirrty Pop soon, if I can get through all the work that's suddenly piled up for me to do in the next few days.

Yippee, Alizée is back! She is one of the most delightful popstars and reminds me of Sophie Ellis-Bextor in the way that she is cute, intelligent and glamorous in a non-annoying way, and her musical style never changes drastically but is consistently lovely and great. Although I can understand quite a lot of French, there are still parts of this, her new single, which make no sense to me, but I'm really hoping I'm correct in thinking she sings about a "Shakespeare sandwich" near the start of the song. I have translated that the song is about Romeo and Juliet, so it could be possible. The lack of complete lyrical understanding makes no difference because this song is so catchy I'd be singing along, making up words if I had to, even if it was in Lithuanian.

Usually the bands who ask me for a mention on this site are absolutely awful, so my hopes weren't high when I clicked on the MySpace of Penny Century. However, my doubts were removed when I heard their songs, as they're actually pretty good! The style is similar to Hello Saferide, The Pipettes and I'm From Barcelona, and although there's nothing quite as fantastic as Pull Shapes or We're From Barcelona, these two songs are very promising. With a little more money put behind their production I think they could be transformed into something quite brilliant, as The Pipettes were when they recorded a studio version of Pull Shapes.

Here's a special treat for fans of the jolliest band on Earth. It's a new song that isn't on their album and the subject is, as you may have guessed, Miss Britney Spears! I'm not sure if Emanuel is quite sincere is his claims of admiration in this song, but it's a good one anyway and reminds me of the last time I saw them play live, which was the first time I heard this song. If you've never seen them live you can watch them perform this song here and you'll get some idea of how monumentally ace this band is.

Asha may have been born in Ethiopia, but her sound is definitely Swedish. If you like the indie-pop of Hello Saferide, Marit Bergman etc. then you'll enjoy this too. She has several nice songs on her MySpace but this one, her current single, is my favourite. Maybe it's because it isn't their first language that Swedes seem to put more effort into their lyrics, but it's not just effort that makes them better - the emotions in these songs just feel more real, to me at least. Singers like Kate Nash and Lily Allen are supposed to capture how it feels to be a British teenager, but the cultural references, although good fun, are not really necessary. I find myself identifying much more with the sentiments of these quirky Swedish popettes who are never afraid to show their foibles, in fact they revel in them. The influential Scandinavian indie site It's A Trap has stated this to be one of their favourites of 2007 so far, and Annika Norlin has also championed her, so we'll have to see if success outside of Sweden is in the path of Asha Ali.