Better than a puppet

Have you ever had a lecturer in college who loves puppets to the extent that you start to wonder whether he sleeps with them at night? If the answer to that question is a no, then obviously, you aren't us. You haven't had a lecturer who wrote a thesis on the history of puppets in Ireland. You just haven't had the experience of a lecture with him. Well, we have. And that leads us to treat anything that comes with even a side of puppetering with grave scepticism, even if all that side of puppetering happens to be is a few strings on the front of an album cover. Enter Charlotte Sometimes, our new favourite female singer-songwriter, who has named herself after a childrens book that - from what we've read of it - is basically the PG13 version of The Time Traveller's Wife. She might have the strings of a puppet on her album cover, but we're loving her. Charlotte, is a bit Fiona Apple-y meets the Kate Nash demos, with an album that really is something special. Her album is what an interesting, intelligent Feist album would sound like and if the song below - about the boyfriend that left her - don't make you want to listen to more, then pop really isn't for you. Seriously, we haven't been this ecstatic about someone since Kate Nash arrived on the scene. Her Myspace is here.

Sweet Valium High | MP3

The girls go crazy

There's a funny paradox about Dragonette that seems to make everything they put their name to rather amazing, while at the same time, have everything they are involved in do really badly. It's a weird state of affairs that lead their debut album Galore to end up containing some of that year's best pop, and yet make no dent at all on the world's ears. It's the not the way things should be, but unlike lesser mortals, the Canadians are still rocking on, and the newest piece of music to come from them is part of a major cover project that's been put together. And not so surprisingly, it's a cover. A cover of ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man that is set to be an electro-meets-pop track that will be filling a lot of our summer listening. We've already pounced on it. A good cover can be one of the best things in the world, and Dragonette's take on Sharp Dressed Man holds up that ideal without forcing out someone who hasn't heard the original. They've made it into their own - in a way foreign to a description of McFly's Queen mauling of days gone by - and it's just perfect. Could this be one of the best covers we've heard this year? Could it just. And even if it isn't yours, there's gonna be loads more to listen to over the blog's life.

Sharp Dressed Man | MP3

But Dannii's got a job as a judge

Given that we've got some rather good friends on a plane to Australia at the moment, it seems the right time to talk about Stephanie McIntosh. About two years ago, when she put out her Tightrope album, we were vocal supporters of her, despite the fact that it doesn't take too much to work out that Autotune is her best friend. There was just something, some sort of unexplainable brilliance about her. In Australia, she did all right with her album and singles - charting, but not exactly shaking the charts to the ground on which it sits. In the UK, she did fuck all right, and given that her PR company decided that not returning calls and emails was a good thing, it's not really that surprising that the charts were off limits to her. A sad fact when you see the likes of Billiam racing up the ladder of success. Sure, it was just a website that wanted to interview her, but unlike a university appearance, you have a bit of a chance to be brought into, rather than dismissed with a flick of a hat on the web. It's a shame really, as she had the opportunity to do really well over this side of the world and now, we're faced with seeing her album in bargain bins - something we've seen more than once, it has to be said. If only she'd tried a bit harder, or more accurately, if only her people had tried a bit harder, then she could have been something. But at least she's got acting to fall back on. It's more than can be said for some of those fucked up by the music biz. We're only semi-bitter about what happened to her. Honest.

So Do I Say Sorry First? | MP3

The Darius factor

You might not have it marked in your calendars, but it is almost six years to the day that Darius Danesh released Colourblind, his first solo single, after appearing on Pop Idol. And just as it was amazing then, we've suddenly been listening to it a lot, discovering that it is actually still amazing. The idea that lacking love has burnt the colour from his retinas, is still genius. But semi-sadly, apart from Colourblind, there's not much more good stuff from Darius to listen to as it is pretty much the only good song he's released but, there is still hope - he is actually still on the books of Simon Fuller's label - and if you didn't know that, it's because he's buggered off to the West End where snobby-nosed critics at The Independent have found him to be some what better than some of the wannabe Billy Elliots ejaculated from stage schools around London, and hence forth, he's a bit of a star on the stage. So, what is the chance of him coming back to the cruel, cruel world of pop music? Probably nada, but then, you never know. He might decide to make a successful comeback just like Gareth Gates did. Because that worked out brilliantly, didn't it. Reminisce people. Reminisce.

Colourblind | MP3

This begins here

Hello and welcome to the Hotstuff Files, a pop music blog that - if you believe the original name, ie. not this one, for the blog - is oozing in awesomeness. And, what reason is there to doubt it? We - it's nice to write in the plural - have already rode the wave of the music blogosphere once, a few years ago, and in the end that venture didn't work out the way it probably should have. But the Hotstuff Files is here to retify that. With a winning formula of free music, great posts, and brilliant taste, the Hotstuff Files starts (and returns from) here. Or, if you want to be absolutely correct, it starts with the next post. Hopefully you'll enjoy what the blog ends up becoming. We're banking on it becoming awesome.

Hot Stuff (I Want You Back) | MP3