Shuffle

EOIN BUTLER'sguide to downloads, singles and free audiostreams

ATOMS FOR PEACE

DefaultXL Recordings **

Named after a 1953 speech by Dwight D Eisenhower, Atoms for Peace are a supergroup whose ranks include producer Nigel Godrich and Red Hot Chilli Peppers bassist Flea. The project is the brainchild of Thom Yorke, and its debut single finds the Radiohead frontman operating at what might be called his own “default” setting: bleeps, beats and lot of impassioned wailing that ultimately goes nowhere.

HOT CHIP

How Do You Do?Domino ****

“A church is not for praying/ It’s for celebrating the life that bleeds through the pain.” The second video from Hot Chip’s In Our Heads album is about as life-affirming a performance as you will ever see delivered by a man in yellow Bermuda shorts.

THE WANTED

I Found YouIsland **

Congratulations to Siva Kaneswaran & co, who, going by the chorus here, have either found love or else successfully completed one of those Where’s Wally puzzle books. The release of this single pits The Wanted and their demented online fanbase in direct competition with boyband arch-nemeses One Direction, whose own single (Live While We’re Young) is due for release at about the same time. (At parties I’m sometimes at a loss as to explain how know all this stuff. It’s for my job. I swear!)

ROBBIE WILLIAMS

CandyUniversal ***

Robbie Williams has set his sights on regaining the crown of “undisputed king of British pop”. (A crown, incidentally, which no one but Williams himself seems to have been aware he possessed in the first place.) This comeback single is a catchy number, reminiscent of Phil Collins in his late 1980s pomp. If king of British pop is a stretch, Candy does boast the most inexplicable deployment of a bad Jamaican accent this side of The Police’s Roxanne.