Ray Davies, Ian Dury, Jarvis Cocker, Mike Skinner, Alex Turner. To that list of great English storytellers, you can append the name Jamie Treays - or, as he's better-known, Jamie T. Most statesiders aren't hip to him yet, but it's only a matter of time: in the U.K., he's stormed from obscurity to the pop charts in a matter of months, and the U.S. release of Panic Prevention, his revelatory debut, is happening this September. Zane Lowe, Britain's most influential deejay, loves him. Lily Allen is a fan; she's already appeared on a remix of one of his songs (the US bonus track "Rawhide"). Jamie T has ridden three singles into the U.K. Top 20, and Panic Prevention hit #4 on the album charts. He took home the Best New Artist trophy at the NME Awards this year, and best of all, Panic Prevention has been shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Why has Jamie T's ascent been so steep? Start with his delivery - conversational, instantly identifiable, smart without resorting to cleverness, tough without being brutal. Like Skinner of The Streets, Treays seems to speak for disaffected working-class youth, but he's the possessor of a skewed, fatalistic, and darkly humorous perspective all his own. Then, there's his bass playing, which anchors his grime and rap-influenced music in the rock tradition; it's unstudied, sure, but it's aggressive and melodic, and Treays coaxes a tone from the instrument that scratches a very deep itch. Finally, his pop smarts are unquestionable: his songs invariably feature big, infectious beats, and a madly-catchy chorus. Take, for example, "Sheila", his first U.S. single, and a song with a hook massive enough to hoist it up the British charts not once but twice over the past year. But irresistible though it is, "Sheila", like most Jamie T numbers, is deadly serious and often downright moving. Here's the tough, articulate urban realism that Treays has become known for - it begins with a story of the drowning of a drunk woman, segues into a tale of a drug dealer on the run, and culminates in a late-night shooting. Jamie T delivers his stories with empathy and understanding, but there's a trace of criticism in his young voice, too. Just like the aforementioned giants whose shoulders he gratefully stands on, his social observations, however witty, are awfully poignant. The clip for "Sheila" is strangely moving, too - especially considering the fact that it stars a pair of baboons. The two trained monkeys turn in remarkable performances as a typical suburban couple living together in an entirely ordinary city apartment. We know one is male and the other is female because of their color-coded keychains; when the "man" grabs his briefcase and heads for work in the morning, he takes the blue ring off of its hanging and leaves the pink one there for his mate. She pushes a vacuum cleaner and cleans up after him - but mostly she waits for him to return. When he does, he puts his arm around her and watches the telly, but he also hits the bottle hard. As the days flip by, the male baboon's drinking gets harder and harder, and often the blue keychain is missing from the wall hangings for nights at a time. The sadness of the female baboon is startlingly rendered; some of the shots of the neglected wife, staring out the window, are positively heartbreaking. Finally, she has enough of him - gathering her courage, she packs and marches out, leaving him alone to tear up the flat.

But for all their experimentation and boundary-pushing, January Jaunt is a rock band - and a pretty damn ferocious one, too. Most of the songs on Echoes & Stills build to towering climaxes: "Love Of My Own Design" and "Plateau" begin as whispers, and culminate in torrents of guitar and piano. Gundahl's voice - an instrument of remarkable expressive power - glides effortlessly over the top of the storm. His falsetto projects ambivalence and vulnerability, but when he needs to compete with the pounding drums and scalding guitars, he drops to a anguished wail that strikes with the force of a snare drum beat. Guitarist Stig Morek is a master of six-string effects processing, and on tracks like the stinging "Seeking With Eyes Closed", he conjures a psychedelic symphony of reverb, distortion, and phasing. The quartet's mesmerizing show have made January Jaunt one of the most popular draws on the Northern European club circuit, and this summer, they'll be streaking through Denmark and Sweden and making new fans wherever they play.

Like many January Jaunt songs, "Try", the lead single, begins with a simple piano pattern. But by the time Ole Gundahl begins to sing, the track has already combusted: it's a swirl of hi-hat, glittering guitar, and high synthesizer. Surely it must be a hypnotic thing to encounter in a concert hall - and director Andres Steen Sørensen has captured some of that energy in his colorful performance clip. Sørensen, who has also shot clips for Mimas and Stanley K, has made a name as one of the more technically-gifted video directors in Denmark (he's also a celebrated band photographer), and with the "Try" clip, he again demonstrates his interpretive skill. The group is shot in action, delivering their song with studied fury. Sørensen projects bars of blue light on Gundahl's face and body - they streak across the darkness like reflections thrown between bars. As the camera slides from left to right, the flashing colored lights move too; restless, they flit from body to body, creating a sense of destabilization. Finally, a stage-light behind Gundahl breaks the reverie, exploding into rays of vibrant color. They stream over the singer's shoulder, blooming as the song reaches its conclusion, and fading to gold-dust after that.

Hailing from the great Sunshine State, Jay Seidl is a born performer. He wears his influcences on his sleeve unapologetically and has painstakingly mastered a variety of pop, rock and country idioms. He grew up as a troubadour, performing songs about people's everyday lives, and he hasn't lost sight of that as he's matured as an artist. Jay's strongest point on his self-titled debut CD, "Jay Seidl Singer - Songwriter", is his understanding that great artists are defined by their versatility, not virtuosity. "Anything", the signature single of the album, was written by Jay to a special friend of his a number of years ago and is reminiscent of the style and sound of David Gates of Bread fame. On "Hollywood Days", he gives a nod to Ray Davies while interpreting the theme in his own way - and we can't help but think that Craig Fuller would be proud of "Something 'Bout A Cowboy" or "Love's Here To Stay". "Beach Life" combines the New Wave tension of The Cars and Blondie with the laid back Floridian sensibilities of Jimmy Buffet and has a nice looping guitar lead as a bonus. He manages to incorporate the sounds of CSN, Roger McGuinn, Gram Parsons and even Robyn Hitchcock in subsequent tracks. Jay offers a compelling bid to become the successor to another late and lamented great, Lowell George, as the custodian of all that's good and pure about Southern music, and that would be a good thing. "Singer - Songwriter" opens with "Grand Man", a tribute to John Lennon, one of his early influences. The track is complimented by a truly gorgeous and sensitive video. The clip is all stills and dissolves featuring John, and it is a very moving clip, to say the least. John's death diminished us all, and the song and the video capture that in a way that hasn't been done before. Say what you want about Elvis, or Michael Jackson, or anyone else.....THE most important and influential rocker of all time was John Lennon, and this is a fitting tribute. The term "singer - songwriter" is often used as a broad stroke to define many artists of wildly diverse sounds, all the while never pinpointing the quintessential singer, songwriter. Make no mistake, however, by combining all these influences, Jay Seidl has crafted a sound that is all his own, and his music is accessible to a very wide spectrum of listeners. This singer, songwriter has taken cues from the very best, and the end result is a collection of songs that has something for everyone, and displays Jay's skill, passion and precision for his own music...

Cadence vs Hugo Varvoglis", the cut that closes Fleur de Lily, has been transformed into the ghostly centerpiece of the Carbon Lily Remixes by Greek dance-music auteur Hugo Varvoglis. This set of inspired reinterpretations of Fleur de Lily songs features mixes from nations all over the world - an appropriate gesture, considering Dalton's timely subject matter. Varvoglis is the star of the set, though: he's reworked four Fleur tracks, and it's his ethereal and propulsive drum and synth programming that gives Carbon Lily so much of its delicate-yet-dangerous character.

Justin Staggs (NOFX, The Soviettes, Strike Anywhere) makes videos that are dark fantasies - he loves to set iconic images against black backdrops, and juxtapose these with images of attractive performers in action. Here, the winsome Dalton provides the beautiful face, and Staggs does the rest. Well, that's not entirely accurate - Dalton has lovely hands, too, and the "Cadence vs Hugo Varvoglis" clip contains plenty of over-the-shoulder shots of the young pianist at work. The room around her is abuzz with sinister and enchanted life: cardboard moths flicker around a suspended lightbulb and a single candle, marionettes shake to attention and then hang, hunched over and poised for their strings to be pulled by an unseen hand. Stuffed animals float from the floor to the ceiling, and surround a masked ballerina as she pirouettes in place. It's all a bit like a young girl's toybox gone mad: childhood memories animated by ghostly rhythms.

The results are in, and it's official: the international indie rock community is in love with Jens Lekman. And how, really, could anybody resist? - he's just about the most charming indiepop star to emerge since the heyday of Belle & Sebastian. Even his letters to his fans (scribed old-school style on his winning website) are conversational, warm, approachable, the writings of a friend. It's not just an image either; this is who he is. Thousands of smitten fans around the world can hardly be blamed for imagining that if they could just board the next plane for Sweden, Jens Lekman would be waiting there for them - glib, open-handed, and eager to give the grand tour.

Then there's Lekman's music. Over the course of several astonishing EPs, LPs, and compilations, he's made it cool to be sweet again. Listeners count on Jens Lekman for radiant melodies, clever samples, a warm baritone voice called "boyfriendable" by Pitchfork (Magnetic Fields reference intended), witty and lovelorn lyrics, illuminating juxtapositions, and dazzling indiepop experimentation. When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog, his '04 debut, felt like a magnificent hybrid of The Left Banke, solo Morrissey, and a peculiarly Scandinavian version of the Modern Lovers; Oh You're So Silent Jens, the collection that followed, established him as one of the pop firmament's brightest lights.

Jet Lag Gemini (also known as Jet Lag or JLG) is a rock band from the United States. Formed in 2004, they released their debut EP, Business, in the summer of 2006. Their first full-length album, "Fire the Cannons" was released on January 22, 2008.

If the video for "Down The Line" is any indication, he's also got excellent taste in alternative comics. Andreas Nilsson and Mikel Cee Karlsson's moving clip for the new single is inspired by Manhog Behind The Face, the arresting strip from underground cartoonist Jim Woodring. (Nilsson and Karlsson also shot a follow-up video for "Killing For Love" that also uses similar imagery) Woodring's character is a burly man with a pig's snout, and he's likely to follow his base urges, even to the brink of self-destruction. But he isn't violent - on the contrary, there's something endearing about the man-hog, and his ingenuous expressions of natural instinct.

José Gonzalez's attraction to Woodring's work, and to Manhog Behind The Face in particular, will be unsurprising to anybody who has followed his work so far. González's writing seeks to strip away artifice and lay bare primal emotion; it is no coincidence that his new album is titled In Our Nature. The singer-songwriter has stated in interviews that his aim was to "bring out the primitive aspects of human beings", and indeed, the writing on In Our Nature is bold and uncompromising. His choice of covers is telling, too - here he does "Teardrop", Massive Attack's hallucinatory love ballad, and a song that speak directly to the unconscious. "Down The Line", the lead single from In Our Nature, is steeped in eerie foreboding, and feels like the soundtrack to a beautiful but disturbing dream.