New moon rising

Not sure if you guys are aware but there are these books, right, and in them are words about vampires, Mormons, love and death and all that kind of stuff. Somewhere along the line someone decided to turn these books into films in order to create great art and perhaps make a few bucks to keep food on the table. MONEY WASN'T A MOTIVE. They cast some hunky young men and some beautifully kooky women and sat back and waited for the awards. None arrived, but the soundtrack entered at number 1 in America and sold a lot more then people expected. So, they've decided to make another film and luckily there's another book to base it on and this time they've really gone all out on the soundtrack in the hope that even more people will get to understand the art.

Big literature fan and all-round film buff Thom Yorke has contributed this rather catchy ditty, entitled 'Hearing Damage':



Whilst Lykke Li has created what we can now call a 'fangtastic' ballad, 'Possibility':



In all seriousness, both these songs are top drawer, with Yorke's even having a hummable chorus and the advantage of not sounding like a headache. We see this soundtracking the bit in the film where the hunky vampire has a bit of a bad day. Lykke Li's effort is glacial, dreamy and very lovely and this will of course be played over someone dying or musing their existence.

Manna from Heaven

Anyone familiar with Musick will know that we're quite big fans of all things Scandinavian. From Robyn to Lykke Li to Fever Ray to Wildbirds & Peacedrums to Roxette to Ace of Base (ahem). Well, add to that ever growing list another name- Manna. She looks like this:



Born in Paris, but now living in Finland, Manna makes the kind of music that Scandinavians seem to create in their sleep. 'Some Girls/Some Boys' is deliciously catchy, cloaked in melody and carries that magnetic quality that Scando-pop (no? No.) must have. First listen you think it's pretty good, then it reveals itself even more second time around and by the third listen you want to track Manna down and marry her. It's what LadyHawke would sound like if she weren't always seemingly half asleep.

Manna isn't on youtube yet, so click on her myspace instead.

While we're at it, here's another Scandinavian pop star by the name of Erik Hassle from Sweden. 'Hurtful' has been described by 'friend of the blog' Marina from Marina & The Diamonds as "really heartfelt cringe-pop"*, which sounds about right and is in no way a bad thing:



It's nice to see the girl from Annie still getting work too.

*Well, she was actually quoting someone else, so it is in fact a quote of a quote of a quote, so doesn't accurately reflect the opinions of Marina per se. Glad we cleared that up.