Bjork - "Hyperballad" (Brodsky Quartet remix). My dad, of all people, dug up a copy of the Bjork remix album, Telegram. He knows I'm into kooky Icelandic sounds, and passed it along - it wasn't really to his taste. (He was disappointed, though: from all that he's read about her, he wants to like Bjork. He was relieved when I told him it was a remix disc, and not necessarily representative of her usual work.) I'm not really a Bjork fan, but I'm extremely partial to her songs here and there, and Vespertine is certainly something worth swimming in. Telegram is actually quite good, highlights being the industrial LFO remix of "Possibly Maybe" and yes, the Brodsky Quartet's peculiar string+vox rendition of "Hyperballad." It's helped, of course, by the fact that "Hyperballad" might well be my favourite Bjork song. As I so famously told a couple of my friends, the way she says "cutlery" makes my hair stand on end, makes me feel all cool and warm.

This remix is lovely because it's a string arrangement, which ever since "Eleanor Rigby" is like a sean hotbutton, but also because it's weird. Rather than just doing a straight cello-violin arrangement, as, say, the String Section has done for Radiohead tunes, the Brodsky Quartet channelled some of Bjork's idiosyncratic energy and made things lovely but just a little off. The instruments don't sound as if they're tuned quite right, and when they dash in vigorously for the chorus, they're not quite on the beat. This isn't an accident - no more than the string seagull sounds. It's an intentional flaw, a chink, a distortion in the glass.

The Weekend - "80s Rockstar". In the wake of my rather gushing review of the album from which this track is taken, I figured I should share some of what I got so excited about. "80s Rockstar" is a synth-stoked pop-punk should-be-hit, enthused and joyful and catchy melody fo' sure. Even the bridge is exciting, a ticklish "ohshit this is going to be great" intro to the chorus' return. Avril Lavigne eat your heart out.