The Swedish Pipettes by way of Camera Obscura and the Sugababes? Sounds like a recipe for success and the results don't disappoint. Those Dancing Days are five trendy school-girls from Stockholm, and the real life versions are just as cute as the cartoon, but I couldn't find a photo of them all together and I can never help posting cute cartoons. Every band should have one. The girls have posted up four songs for download on their MySpace, my favourite being Hitten, closely followed by self-titled Those Dancing Days, Tasty Boy and Discho... OK, I'll just say I love all of them! Hitten is the least electro-sounding of the MySpace songs, but the beginning of it is so Pull Shapes-esque I just can't resist.

The Ark now have a strong challenger for my Melodifestivalen 2007 support, as Måns has followed them in gaining a place in the final, which takes place on 10th March. His chances don't seem too strong as his competitors include the hugely popular Sebastian Karlsson, who came second in the series of Idol where Måns placed fifth and enters MF with his best song yet, a certain crowd-pleaser, but Måns also has an excellent entry. Cara Mia is a dance-pop song, quite similar in style to last year's Eurovision entry Tornero by Mihai Traistariu, but lighter and poppier and with an amazingly catchy chorus. It's extremely uplifting, it's not left my head since I first heard it on Saturday, and I have hardly stopped playing it. I also must take a moment to mourn the loss from MF 2007 of Magnus Carlsson, which not only means that for the first time in my following the contest there will be no Alexander Bard protegée in the final, but also that an amazing song has lost out, as Magnus' entry was a masterpiece in the vein of the brilliant Swedish singer Bosson, also harking back (perhaps too much, even) to Take On Me by A-Ha. It's up for download here, and hopefully it will go on to be a big hit outside of the competition - I'll be very surprised if I don't hear it many a time on my beloved Rix FM in the coming months.

If this track is anything to go by, we should stop waiting for the next Rachel Stevens album - it's here in the form of Trip The Light Fantastic by Sophie Ellis Bextor. Her distinct vocals put some people off, but here she simply adds character to a wonderful pop song. If you liked Rachel's Negotiate With Love and Every Little Thing (and really, what true pop fan couldn't love those songs?) then you must hear this right away. I can't wait for the album - sadly we've still got nearly 3 more months to go!

This is such a moving sad song, it's really lovely. Its realness makes it special. The male and female singers are both great, showing emotion delicately and earnestly. I love how it builds up and a phrase like 'Meet me next to fahrenheit', which doesn't really make sense, somehow sounds really profound! The simplicity make the song, and even though I'm not entirely sure what they're on about, I can feel all the indeterminable emotions. I guess you can take it to be whatever emotion you want to feel. The WinterKids are great songwriters, definitely a band to watch out for, more for their greatness than bigness, though I have little doubt that they will be big. They haven't released an album yet but when they do it's sure to be worth buying. Their other songs are more jolly and bouncy and have super-catchy choruses, particularly their amazingly ace previous single Tape It which you can download here.

I've never liked anything by Cosmo4 before, but this is turning out to be one of my favourite entries of Melodifestivalen 2007. Sadly it's already fallen out of the competition, but it did share a round with The Ark, Jimmy Jansson and Jessica Andersson. It sounds like Mambo by Helena Paparizou as done by Ch!pz, so it's ultra-cheesy and great. It's pure catchy pop that you'll be singing for weeks, whether you like it or not. As much as I love the sophisticated, carefully-composed pop music of Xenomania and Richard X, sometimes you just need the simple, silly stuff and this fits the slot perfectly.

If you're anything like me you will have completely exhausted your copy of CSS's shiny and fabulous latest album, and be desperate to hear something new from the super-cool Brazilians. Well, this cover version is neither new in the sense of originality or of being made recently, but I hadn't heard it until yesterday and I do think it's a pretty good version. CSS have a very distinctive and unique style so it's interesting to see how that translates onto another group's song. Listen out for a surprise insertion of another famous pop-rock classic part way through as well.

Dima Bilan doesn't release many songs in English (it's pretty much a yearly event), but when he does they are always completely brilliant. I am hoping that his next album will be simply made up of great pop songs like this, Never Let You Go and It's Not That Simple - if it is, it could be the best album of 2007. I'm sure you already know and love NLYG and INTS, and Lady Flame (which was a b-side to NLYG in Sweden, but has a video so presumably was a single in Eastern Europe) is similar to the former but faster, poppier, cheesier, more of a disco-pop sound, and extremely catchy. Bizarrely, I saw an advert for a ringtone of this on a music channel the other day, suggesting it may be released as a single here. It doesn't stand a chance of being a hit but I'll certainly be picking up a copy if I can find one. I only wonder why he didn't save this for Eurovision, it would be perfect, although perhaps too much of a conventional pop song to be a winner. Amusing Dima fact: His first single was called 'Bum'!

Knowing that this band were friends of Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco, I couldn't believe my ears when I heard their single Wine Red last July. It was not emo or even rock at all, but a lovely and unusual acoustic-pop song. I listened to it often, but not until today did I dare to seek out any more of their work, expecting Wine Red to be their one-off good song. And yes, they do have some quite rubbish ones which make my ears ache, but they also have some really interesting pop songs on their album, including this one which is nothing but fun. It's a bit cabaret, musical-esque, with hints of ska and swing. It's bouncy, melodramatic and silly, and although you can hear similarities in the boy's way of singing to those emo bores, he makes that sound into something completely different and highly enjoyable.

I'd heard a few things by the Howling Bells before and been utterly bored, so I was very surprised to stumble on the video for this new single on a music channel, and find it was them and it was a rather good song. It sounds like the rockist answer to Flashdance by Deep Dish, but it's really pretty poptastic and ace. Sultry vocals and hypnotic lyrics mesh with jerky guitars. It's no Girls Aloud but you will be bopping in your seat and singing this for hours after you hear it. Even if they never do any other good songs, it will be worth the band's existence just for this single.

If the name Greg Kurstin sounds familiar to you, it's because there can't be many readers of this blog who don't own at least one CD with his name on the sleeve. His recent credits include much of Lily Allen's album, Rock Steady and Chickfit by All Saints, Catch You by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and tracks by Peaches, Natasha Bedingfield, Jamelia, Marion Raven, Jenny Lewis, Jason Mraz... the list goes on and it's mostly very ace, so I was excited to hear the work of his own band, The Bird And The Bee. It's a similar set-up and musical direction to Frou Frou or Dragonette, with a male songwriter and female singer. As with those two bands, Inara George has done some solo work, including an album called All Rise released on January 25 2005, almost exactly two years before her new album with Greg came out on January 23 this year. Their music is sweet and wistful, very nice without being invasive, so it's quite relaxing. If you miss Frou Frou then hop over to their MySpace immediately and fall in love with the lovely music (and all of it is completely lovely, although a bit repetitive) of The Bird and the Bee. A remix of this song reached no.1 on the dance charts in America, but I've posted the original because I think it's more representative of the band's style.

When you hear the intro to this song, you'll think I've lost my pop and been dragged over to the dark side of thrashing angsty rock, but as soon as the singing starts you'll realise that Damone is just the next logical step from Fefe Dobson, and the group are already getting more critical acclaim than Fefe ever did. The members are male apart from the lead singer, Noelle Leblanc, but she has so much girl power that the band is certainly more female than male. This is the kind of music girls can get behind - Noelle is representing real teenage girls (although I think she may have just surpassed her teenage years), without resorting to using her feminine charms to attract attention. I don't know if it will work (they've been going since 2002 but the latest album, with this as its title track, seems to be getting more attention), where it hasn't for Fefe or Lillix or (so far) Marion Raven, but I think they may have the best chance of all the female rockers appealing to actual rock fans as opposed to just pre-teen wannabes. If you like The Donnas, give this a go - it's better than anything they've ever done.

The music has been quite varied on here lately but I certainly never expected to be posting something that could easily come under the category of emo... yet here it is! This may fit with the sound of emo bands such as Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco (well, it may not sound like both of them but I get confused which songs are by which of the bands) but the lyrics aren't depressing and overall it's pretty ace and jolly. The intro is great, although I quite worryingly realised it sounds quite like Bloc Party (so I'm now comparing a song I like to Bloc Party and emo?), and the first verse sounds like a proper dance song - it's only when it got into the chorus I went off it, but then after a couple of listens I loved the chorus too and, realising it sounds like The Sounds with a male singer, I decided to give the song my full support. Since then I've been playing it almost non-stop! If any of you, perhaps my younger readers, are stuck with friends or classmates who listen to rubbish proper emo, recommend this to all of them and soon your ears will be free of crap and indulging in this wonderous sound instead!

I couldn't find the recorded version of this track on MP3 but this acoustic version from an XFM session is just as good. You can hear the proper one on her MySpace and, if you like it, buy her digital EP which features this song alongside a strange but interesting track called Caroline's A Victim. Kate seems unable to escape being compared to Lily Allen, but she is a more relaxed, ordinary girl version - no celebrity parents as far as I know, but she is 19 and has a strong London accent, which she doesn't hide at all in her singing. Her song-writing has the same cynical realist style but there's something gentler about Kate's music (despite the lyrics of this song being about bird poo!) which I think will give her a more mature audience. She'll never reach the commercial heights of Lily's success but I think the people who found Lily too precocious may be more inclined to join in this time. Fans of Nellie McKay and Regina Spektor should take note as well. Doesn't it look like she has no legs in this photo?