Over the past five years, this Melbourne combo has been one of indiepop's most elusive quantities, but they're also one of its best-loved. Their music is joyous, spontaneous, simultaneously primal and digital, orchestral, whimsical, skewed, a gateway into an altered universe. On an Architecture In Helsinki track, there are no rules: strings and woodwinds coexist with ratty-sounding guitar and weird percussion, baroque-inspired verses bump heads with techno-minimalist choruses, words are playful and surreal, and melodies dart, dive, skitter and dovetail like honeybees in flight.

There's always been something quite tribal about Architecture In Helsinki's image and music, and the clip for "Heart It Races" makes the subtext manifest. Directed by Kris Moyes - best known for his innovative clips for the Presets and Cut Copy - the "Heart It Races" video pokes fun at contemporary ethnography while dazzling us with some magnificent day-glo puppetry. The video peers on what appears to be the burial rites of the last remaining members of a primitive tribe. The natives are, of course, the six members of Architecture In Helsinki, each outfitted with a black body suit and a plush puppet dangling around his or her neck. The marionettes mimic the movements of their human hosts: sitting cross-legged along a canal, brandishing a staff, extracting red, fluffy hearts from their dead comrades. The tribe resides along a canal (the clip was shot in Mexico City), and the outdoor scenes are spectacular. But when the lights go off, the fun really starts - the members of the band vanish, and the puppets are left alone to frolic together under the blacklights.

"Debbie", the latest single, is a joyous blast of dance-pop with an irresistible chorus, an exuberantly funky bass line, and a horn arrangement straight from the golden age of MTV. Cameron Bird wails the song out with newfound conviction - he's added some real rock and roll grit to one of the most distinctive voices in modern indie. A song so explosive deserves some pyrotechnics in its video, and to make that happen, Architecture in Helsinki has brought in Andy "Three Fingers" Davis to handle the fire and smoke. But in keeping with the band's idiosyncratic ethos, the clip for "Debbie" focuses more on the pyrotechnician character than it does on any of his effects (think of it as a Spinal Tap-esque mockumentary). Josh Logue's hilarious video is a backstage pass to the making of the new Architecture In Helsinki spot - and we see the band through the eyes of the friendly smoke-bomber.

Maybe a little too friendly. He lectures the group on proper explosives technique, gets in the way of the shooting, throws dice with the guitar player, and even attempts to pick up one of the members of the band (she turns him down.) Some of his stunts go awry: he nearly blows up Cameron Bird, and must rush to the stage to put out a fire. But he's an affable character - bearded and decked out in a yellow safety suit and red earmuffs - and his enthusiasm for dynamite fits the track. Meanwhile, the band dances away on the white soundstage, oblivious to the columns of smoke, animated by the manic music they've created.

Architecture In Helsinki introduced themselves to their video audience with the elliptical, hypnotic "This Is A Call" video; two years later, their dizzy clip for "It'5" turned the Aussie group into a human centrifuge. Isobel Knowles's animated spot for "Do The Collapse" is now acknowledged as an indie masterpiece - 8-bit videogame imagery, a Saturday-morning cartoon plotline, and a climax in which the bandmembers (or the superhero-like icons representing them) are swallowed by a shark-monster in a PacMan maze.

Since the release of the technicolor Places Like This, Architecture In Helsinki's videos have become, if anything, even more inspired. The bandmembers' taste for outrageous costuming, comic excess and satire and hyperactive movement has served them well - as has their willingness to experiment on camera. Kris Moyes's mind-blowing clip for "Heart It Races" used puppets and fluorescent outfits to tell the story of a primitive tribe (played by the members of AIH, of course) living in suburban Melbourne. For the memorable "Hold Music" video, director Kim Gehrig put the musicians on trampolines, and captured their wild and spontaneous mid-air choreography. Their recent clip for the uproarious "Debbie" was a video about making a video - a behind-the-scenes mockumentary and exposé of a stuntman gone haywire.

Josh Logue handled the camera for "Debbie" - and he's back for the winning "Like It Or Not" video. Now, we've all seen animated clips before, but it's a fair bet you've never watched one quite like this: the entire spot has been shot from cross-stitched designs. Pitchfork, among others, has noted the easy correspondence between Architecture In Helsinki's homespun sound and the aesthetic virtues of yarn-work: the clip, writes Marc Hogan "weaves together brightly colored threads the way the group can at their hyperactive best." What's more cross-stitching is a visually-bold technique: much as Cameron Bird's excited voice leaps out of Architecture In Helsinki's explosive mixes, eye-catching images knitted against solid backgrounds jump out at the viewer.

Cross-stitching, as it turns out, is ideal for storytelling, too. And although it's loaded with humorous and provocative images with early 80s referents - check out the Rubik's Cube hot air balloons - "Like It Or Not" is a narrative clip. It follows the tale of two coconuts who, dislodged from their tree, roll along on a fantastic voyage through some highly psychedelic landscapes. They're swept up in a twister (which unravels some of the threads), kicked through the jungle by sunglass-wearing hipster lions, smacked across a ping-pong table, putted into the stratosphere by horse-headed golfers, and stowed on the back of a giant pineapple as it floats through purple seas. The coconuts are fully anthropomorphized throughout, and their little stitched faces express sadness, trepidation, surprise, contentment, and relief. Rest assured, there is a happy ending to the journey here. But the best shot of all comes halfway through the clip - a perfectly realized cross-stitched tableau of Architecture In Helsinki in action, hammering away at their instruments as the fuzzy protagonists roll through.

With another World Series appearance in full swing (not to mention the usual autumn revelry), they're partying up in Boston this week - and Beantown has never looked better than it does in the clip for "So Alive". The Avalon Superstar video features sweeping vistas of the skyline, the Charles, Back Bay, Oliver Street, the famous CITGO sign, and many other sights familiar to Boston regulars. British house singer and songwriter Rita Campbell is the visitor ready to capture the town, and she walks the streets - and shops the boutiques - like a true jet-set sophisticate.

Then again, Campbell and writing partner Simon Langford are no strangers to Massachusetts. Billy Mead, the third member of Avalon Superstar, is a longtime Boston dance-music stalwart, and co-proprietor of the world-class Groove Factory recording studio. The well-traveled house producer has built a bridge from Beantown to London, cutting tracks with (among others) Lara McAllen, Andrea Britton, Amanda Wilson (Freemasons), and Steve Smith of Dirty Vegas. It was Smith who contributed much of the music to "All My Love", the Avalon Superstar debut single that tore up the clubs in the summer of 2006.

While often compared to Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, and Tori Amos, Natasha Khan has developed an identity and sonic vocabulary of her own. Her music, while immediately familiar, is also elusive, multifaceted, impossible to pin down. Nevertheless, one word that continues to appear in reviews of Bat For Lashes is "spooky", and it's a good descriptor: Khan herself has likened the feel of her music to "Halloween as a child", and she's appeared onstage dressed as a skeleton. Part of the ghostliness of Fur & Gold radiates from Khan's ethereal - but edgy - vocals. Her voice is a supple instrument; she can howl and purr, address the listener conversationally, sound like a frightened child or a terrifying adult, and switch between modes with startling precision. "What's A Girl To Do?", the first American single from Bat For Lashes, starts with a near-spoken verse over a Phil Spector beat, and then slips into an anguished, howling chorus. It's a chilling ride, hypnotic and engrossing, and it announces Natasha Khan's arrival as a nascent master of cinematic song.

Director Dougal Wilson is no stranger to strange, spectral music - he's shot videos for LCD Soundsystem, Hard-Fi, and The Streets, and he was behind the camera for the creepy late-night taxi drive that accompanied Jarvis Cocker's "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time". But with the unsettling clip for "What's A Girl To Do?", he's outdone himself: it's one of the best clips we've seen all year, and it's sure to be the talk of YouTube and other video-sharing sites. Looking lovely - and perhaps a little dreamy - in a blue pajama-top and silver tights, Natasha Khan guides a child's bicycle down a deserted highway at night. She rides, unswerving, in the middle of the road, and sings as she does; behind her, trees angle toward the center of the street, forming a dark canopy over her head. Light flashes off the bicycle handlebars and reflectors, the clip in Khan's hair, and the sparkles on her shirt. But when "What's A Girl To Do?" reaches its chorus, the action really begins: a chorus-line of BMX bike riders suddenly appear behind her. Wearing giant, grim animal masks, they clap along with the song and perform stunts in tight formation. The incongruity of the masked riders only add to the chill - as do the images of trick-or-treaters lost in the woods, abandoned and upturned automobiles, and Khan's own breath, condensing in clouds beside her.

Since coming to national attention in 2004, the young singer-songwriter with an international profile has done more work for charitable projects than almost any other musician we can think of. Jelen's concern about the perils of climate change compelled him to join the Natural Resources Defense Council and Wildlife Works; not satisfied with that, he's launched his own Ben Jelen Foundation for the Environment. His website (link below) offers energy-saving tips and links to online petitions alongside the usual photos, tour dates and MP3s. He's toured for Rock The Vote and the Save Darfur Foundation, and contributed tracks to benefit CDs for the RAINN Network and Amnesty International. His engagement with public issues is not superficial: his conscience is what compels him to pick up his guitar and broadcast his message to the globe. That said, there's nothing preachy or astringent about the bright, striking Ex-Sensitive. Jelen and mega-platinum producer Linda Perry (Pink, Christina Aguilera, too many others to list) have crafted a multifaceted set; one that functions simultaneously as a confessional statement of personal honesty and as a critique of a world out of balance. The songs on Ex-Sensitive are inspired by Jelen's charitable work, but they're deliberately left ambiguous: he could be singing about a deteriorating biosphere or a deteriorating relationship. "Wreckage", the latest single, is a perfect example - "we've got to listen!", he demands, before imploring his audience to assess particulars and put the pieces back together. Without tipping his hand, Jelen gently invites us to acknowledge that our world is in disarray, and asks us to "crawl out of the wreckage" of the past few years and into a more enlightened future. To us, it seems like the perfect song for an election year: a confession of misdeeds, a statement of hope, faith in the possibility of a fresh start. Jelen's message is wedded to an aching melody and a gorgeous arrangement. "Wreckage" is full of moving, heartfelt lyrics, a passionately-penned verse, and a rafter-raising chorus. Even the jaded (and stridently apolitical) critical establishment has begun to take notice of this galvanizing singer: in a four-and-a-half-star review in the All-Music Guide, Jo-Ann Greene calls Jelen "an Everyman with a cause", and praises his mission to "connect with each and every one of us, and help reconnect us to each other." The clip for "Wreckage" is similarly ambitious. It marks the directorial debut for Linda Perry, and like everything she touches, it is an immediate winner. We watch the sun set on a beautiful seascape - but Ben Jelen isn't in a position to appreciate it. Instead, he's inside, seated behind the desk at something like a personal command-and-control center. The camera-friendly singer hammers out his words on a vintage manual typewriter, and manipulates the ribbon and the carriage in time with the "Wreckage" backbeat. But this is no old-school workspace - in a visual metaphor for the continuity of technology, the old Royal is wired to a bevy of flat-panel screens. The words he's typing appear on one of them; the others are filled with images of current events and environmental wonders. This is, the video seems to suggest, the way we access the world: we see through a screen darkly, gathering our impressions as best as we can, and reacting to what reaches us. By the middle of the clip, he's on his back, overwhelmed by the rapid-fire images. But he rallies, turns on a silver spigot to water an indoor garden, and watches as the screens fill with inspirational messages.

This is about the band bicycle, tricycle, and thus about the phenomena of bicycle, tricycle in general. To write about this band objectively is impossible, as all experiences are necessarily subjective, involving as they do the element of consciousness, which cannot be instrumented. This is perhaps a study in the affirmation that any assertion of an objective observer is inherently impossible, and yet at the same time there is a deeply imbedded pattern of coherency in all that we regard as pop music. Fame itself is nothing more than a pattern of deeply imbedded complexity of order; an order so complex it is not immediately discernible or obvious. Indeed the often heard rational defense, "that was just a coincidence," is itself an acknowledgment that we have just discerned a pattern, but because there is no immediately obvious path of mechanistic causation behind it, we are consciously choosing to refuse to acknowledge the songwriting. If we do this enough, of course we will never discern any deeper pattern of meaning. Yet, if we instead allow the content of such experiences to be observed often enough, the hooks may become so overwhelming that we cannot ignore it, and must attempt to formulate some new expectations of music. When these experiences involve time, numbers and music, I find the coherence of the band is more easily documented. Ironically, it may be through the language of numbers, which in recent centuries has been reserved as the exclusive domain of style and science in pursuit of the triumph of mechanistic rock stars, which may ultimately bring about its downfall. So it is with bicycle, tricycle.