THE STREETS: Heaven For The Weather. The street poet lets his imagination race away into overdrive once again – and there's no hope of stopping him.

Q-TIP: Gettin' Up. Naturally cool strut from the leader of hip hop gurus A Tribe Called Quest who also seems to know a thing or two about fine threads.

WILEY featuring DANIEL MERRIWEATHER: Ca$h In My Pocket. Hip hop and soul fusion that muses on the desperate need for more and more readies every day.

PARAMORE: Decode. Revved-up rock that explodes lightning-style with a bolt of white-heat energy and then settles into a bizarre pace of widely fluctuating rhythms.

M83: We Own The Sky. A rich, ambient daydream that wraps the listener up in its warm synth bliss.

FLOBOTS: Rise. Big on the political message front and hammers it home with bare snare hip hop powered forward by drums and cellos. A head-nodder in every sense of the word.

THE KILLERS: Day And Age. A band of wild extremes. They can unearth pure gems – and they do here with the phenomenal Human that trudges off to the disco and the chiming melodic majesty of The World We Live In. It was a surprise – nay, a shock even – when The Killers began to go synth surfing, but it's something they ought to pursue more often. These two tracks can live with anything the band has done before, but there's quite a few more that aren't, unfortunately, killer tracks. The sound veers from Talking Heads-style shuffles through to an almost ELO-type melodic presence, but too many end up lost in the fog of nonentity.

KANYE WEST: 808s And Heartbreak. He's pushing on the boundaries here – and then falls through. The surreal dreamscape of Say You Will sets a tone that delves into the downbeat, deadpan and sometimes downright depressing. The titles give the game away with the likes of Welcome To Heartbreak, Heartless and Paranoid. Even forays into semi reggae hip hop pop and funky synth fail to lift what essentially become flagging spirits. It finishes without a flourish with the tumbling Coldest Winter.

VARIOUS: Christmas Jukebox.A 3-CD compilation that includes festive classics such as Slade, Band Aid, Greg Lake, Jackson 5, David Essex and Bing Crosby, but tries to show that Christmas isn’t just about, well, Christmas as it chucks in a non-festive pop and rock selection featuring Razorlight, The Commitments, Thin Lizzy, Robert Palmer, Rainbow, Amy Winehouse, The Mavericks, Rose Royce, Tom Jones and James Brown. How bizarre.