Nas ft. Marsha Ambrosius - If I Ruled The World (2009 Refit)

If the original has Lauryn Hill on the vocals, and was Nas's first hit, back in 1996, it's a hard act to follow. But I like this refit: Marsha Ambrosius has a butter-smooth voice, and the electric bleepy instrumental is very 2009 (in a good way). It's also a change of tempo, faster than the original. Lyrics are still classic.

Calle 13 - La Jirafa

This one's like a mad cumbia, killing it on the accordion and the drums. Fittingly, the lyrics are a tongue-in-cheek love/lust song.

Fit video too: Calle 13 always manage to make Puerto Rico look like one of those dreams you don't want to wake up from.

Eero Johannes - We Could Be Skweeeroes

This is a little less mainstream perhaps: there's no vocal on it, and the slapped bass in the intro sounds a bit like a well-tuned burp. And some of the chirped melody appears to be being sung by mice breathing helium. For me, that's no bad thing: I like a few mammalian sounds in my elecronic music, even if they are eructatory.

And its creator, Eero Johannes, as well as having an astoundingly good name, is an illustrator. Now if only he were a website designer too, and maybe able to order complicated coffee from Starbucks without sounding like a tosser, he'd be the ultimate New-Millennial-Renaissance-Man.

Silkie - Brazil

This is only a radio rip, so skip the first minute if you don't want to hear the babble. But it's such a clean track, like weightless dubstep. None of the earthquake bass, just an amazing rhythm and careful structure. Not too complex to be a party tune, but never boring. Vocal sample's not bad either.

Beem ft. Peder - Color Separated

Can I get a groove? This is a funky little number, a little bedtime skweee, but with a disco flavour. And you can download it here, for the princely sum of absolutely nothing.

In fact the only thing I don't like about this track is the American spelling of colour. I prefer the British spelling. I struggled to position those extraneous vowels at school, and they say nothing good comes easy. So the British spelling is better.

Although I think it's safe to assume that before the century's out we will have done away with vowels entirely and just be abbreviating wantonly as we mash our communication devices with our thumbs (probably surgically adjusted at birth by removal of the thumbnail and trimming of the tip to a sharp point to facilitate use of otherwise-infeasibly-small-touch-screens). Or we will be pleading in Mandarin with our Chinese overlords. Or battling monsters made out of bark chippings and Tamagochis. Something like that.

See the effect this music has on me?

Beem - Color Separated (w. Peder from Deportees) by dance-department

Madvillain - All Caps

Oh yes. This is a collaboration between the genius musician Madlib and the original masked rapper MF Doom. And that, my loves, is a bona fide Good Thing.

It's got a complex instrumental, with echoes of a silent movie soundtrack (1:58) and big-band swing (0:52 - trumpets, anyone?). Yet somehow Madlib's made it sound totally fresh. The video's fun too.

Radiohead - House Of Cards

The video was made using stereotaxy. Which is more commonly used in brain surgery. And the opening shot makes Thom look like Beethoven. (That's probably not accidental.)

Song is intense: those slow backing strings lifting you up and the lyrics like a knife. Pretty much the real deal. Still not Ludwig , but coming close.