For some reason I love: catchy British songs with sassy girls turning down pushy men.

viz.

Lily Allen - "Knock Em Out". She's the 2006 blogosphere-MySpace-BBC-musicbiz hype queen, someone with canny marketing and a dad who's a famous actor/singer. She's also someone with a hell of a song - "LDN" is one of my favourite singles of the year so far, and by far the year's most secretly cynical summer hit. And if her leaked demos are any indication, there's much more up her sleeve. So here is "Knock Em Out", a track with slippery piano and drums that keep stepping in and out of the pub. Lily sounds a bit like The Streets' Mike Skinner but she can sing, this clever lady lilt that scampers over horns, twinkles, interjections, scraps of sound. Whereas most popstars seem like bionic women, objects of lust or idolatry but never friends, Lily sounds almost approachable here. When she says, of a man, "Not in a million years!" I can almost imagine her turning to me, her trustworthy pal, so I can tumble over my barstool, make a distraction, and let her slip away.

Doctor and Davinche - "Gotta Man?". With grime breathlessness and tensing synth-strings, this is a much spikier track than "Knock Em Out" - but the goof and play is still there, steel-shiny in the darts Doctor and Davinche pass back and forth. He's confident as an aubergine (yes), she's strong-willed as a courgette (yes). So they bump into each-other grinning, each one as full of character as the other, each one more than up to the exchange of wits. Listen to the way Doctor introduces himself, like a Dickens character extending a hand - or Davinche's squeak of the lips in reply, her fake name, the hard intelligence in her eyes. Such humour hidden under the mile-a-minute flow, the rising military beats.

[buy Run the Road II]

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Eric at Marathonpacks has written a marvelous, marvelous post isolating his favourite tiny little moments from The Beatles' back catalog.

Lots of other blogs have been talking about it so I'm not making a special highlight of it, but this month's free & new Bishop Allen song, "Flight 180", is really great. Copping from the Arcade Fire instead of Bishop Allen's usual guitar-pop influences, the track is a moody, driving, soaring song - a dark car falling slow motion off a highway, into the crags or onto an invisible road.

I've been enjoying the new comp by Scandinavian musicblog It's A Trap, particularly tracks by Plain Fade, Hello Saferide, Moonbabies and Munck/Johnson. A great mix of indie pop, post-rock and a little bit of pop-punk. At $6 it's a bargain, and you can stream the whole thing by clicking 'Preview' here.