By Stephanie King

Well, what do you know? Vampire Weekend’s hotly anticipated second album actually lives up to the hype. In this slushy, chilly January, Contra is a ray of sunshine. Showcasing their trademark musical ventriloquism, sounding like Arctic Monkeys on Cousins, Animal Collective on California English, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Giving Up the Gun and, yes, Paul Simon, always, Vampire Weekend still manage to emerge sounding like themselves.

By Stephanie King

Sometimes, Song of the Week earns its place not by being good, but by being irritatingly catchy. Alicia Keys’ Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart promises greatness akin to Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love, but ultimately fails to deliver.

By Lisa Reinisch

Music is taboo for Muslims - at least if you ask certain religious scholars. It’s a minority view, but it still throws up plenty of questions for Muslim musicians and fans. The good news is that Deen Tight by American director Mustafa Davis does not even pretend to have any answers. Instead, the film is a catalogue of personal solutions to the identity crises that many Muslim artists go through or, in some cases, manage to avoid.

By Stephanie King

On first listen, Laura Veirs’ Wide-Eyed, Legless sounds like a pleasant rip-off of Suzanne Vega’s Left of Center. But while it shares that song’s core melody, it is the striking purity of Veirs’ voice and the song’s glossy production – the musical equivalent of soothing, medicinal Manuka honey – that recalls Vega most vividly. Because while Left of Center is bright and clean in a confrontational way, Wide-Eyed, Legless is muted and spectral, but equally beguiling.