This week's new singles

PICK OF THE WEEK

David Guetta Feat Flo Rida And Nicki Minaj
Where Them Girls At (Positiva)

Of course this record is actually horrible, the sort of thing they'd play in a dentist's waiting room if they wanted to traumatise you into letting them fill your cavities with molten lead, stag beetle larvae, anything, if only the music would stop. That said, this record also contains the best musical moment of the week. What are the odds? Not that big when you consider that Nicki Minaj is responsible. Rapping like a cross between Vicky Pollard and the evil Wario, Minaj so outclasses the other contributors that they should be paying a weekend upgrade just to be in her company. Also, to commemorate a recent trip to London, she does half her verse in a cockney accent imagining, I think, a threesome with Lily Allen. Made me feel right patriotic.

About Group
Don't Worry (Domino)

It's like a record industry thought experiment: what would happen if you took that glasses bloke from Hot Chip, with all his unusual vocal stylings and penchant for ironic wordplay, but got rid of that electronic stuff which people like and replaced it with a band of jazz experimentalists. Well you'd have this which, while typically wry and with a winning kernel of a melody, is rather trad and just a little bit flat. This may be the point, but I preferred it when he jerked around with a keytar. And wore glasses that made him look like Brains on a week-long bender. I could go on.

Engineers
To An Evergreen (K Scope)

Engineers they might be, but hardly the useful kind if this EP is anything to go by. Give these guys a call when your bridge collapses and they'll amble along, three days late, breakfast still in their beards and mumbling something about the sunset being "unreal". This is laidback "folktronica" that's both quite pretty and quite pleased with its own prettiness. And is also stoned. So basically it's James Franco. And would you trust him to fix your bridge?

O'Death
Bugs (City Slang)

This lot are doing most things pretty well. They've got the harmonies of the Fleet Foxes. The lonesome falsetto of Sufjan Stevens. Beirut-ish brass. And not forgetting the all-important Mumford banjo. It's a tightly crafted piece of posh-folk that by no means lets its genre down. But for all its well-studied references, this song has missed a glaring opportunity to include a middle-aged bearded man on a lute. O'Death, where is thy Sting?

Driver Drive Faster
It's All Over It's Everywhere (Akoustik Anarkhy)

So this is all a bit motorik, all a bit kraut, which makes it just as derivative as O'Death, perhaps, but it's also a bit twee. Which I think makes it interesting. It's like some fey kids got together and decided to act cool, or some cool kids realised, actually we're quite fey and like Lady Gaga says we should respect ourselves. However they came to the conclusion, more power to the buggers.