Travels - "Friends in Bands". A brilliant song, a brilliant sound, part Yo La Tengo, part Young Knives, part Low, with lyrics that gesture toward a feeling both familiar and hazy, like staring at your best friend through smoked glass. And of course there's the brilliance of how soon it ends, in just 2:36, leaving you wanting the rest. (You have to buy the rest.) I love the juxtaposition of that hot, cruddy electric guitar and the soft, low backing oooohs; I love the single tambourine clicks. It's the xx's minimalism and restraint, applied to different ends. [MySpace / pre-order - comes with instant download and Travels' last album too]

Steve Mason - "All Come Down". One of my favourite things about the Beta Band was the way that now and then they reminded me of Phil Collins. Most of this was Steve Mason's doing, with his Collinsian blend of wistfulness and bravado. On "All Come Down" he shows these same qualities, singing like a rising nobody, a humble champion. But whereas the Beta Band (or King Biscuit Time) were shambolic, "alternative", here everything is perfect, gauzy, pristine. Even the reverb sounds expensive. When I was 18 I wouldn't have liked it, but today it sounds basically magnificent. Pop producer Richard X has made a simple song into beautiful soft-rock, suffused with melancholy. Would that this song ended the prom. [buy]

(still-life painting source)