Caught in the Net: Green goes straight into Compton

Cross the Proms' two most popular fixtures – the Last Night of the Proms and the Doctor Who Prom – and you might just end up with the event that's taking over the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday afternoon. It's a recreation of the programme you would have heard had you attended the Last Night of the Proms 100 years ago, in 1910.

With Best Coast and the girls Vivian and Dum Dum, there's no shortage of American female singers knocking out lo-fi rock full of surf guitars, shoegaze riffs, Ramones' bubblegum and distant vocals. I've not yet grown tired of the trend, it seems. Colleen Green (below), a young musician from Oakland, follows in a similar path, though even further down the lo-fi scale. In July she put out an eight-track cassette Milo Goes to Compton, through Suffering Jukebox (ind.pn/cw47 j9). Get one song, the excellent "Worship You", at ind.pn/b9JW04. On it Green sings a soft vocal over a suitably fuzzy guitar and an old-school sounding drum machine, with the cheap beats giving her more of an experimental feel than her forebears. Hear other tracks at myspace.com/c0lleen1.

Little lovely song on the prairie

On her Myspace, ind.pn/cDXa JO, the Brooklyn singer Sharon Van Etten describes her music as "sad prairie folk music", which is appropriate. The forthcoming album Epic, sees Van Etten sing plaintive love songs over sparse guitar-led arrangements. Inevitably recalling early Cat Power, her melancholy vocals are quite beautiful. The record is released on 4 October. Lead single "One Day" is already on iTunes, while we have two more tracks streaming at independent.co.uk/ artsblog. In March she did a session for the Day-trotter site; hear that at ind.pn/bRGWPS.

No place like home for Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire's latest video has been rapturously received this week. Made by Chris Milk for the track "We Used to Wait", it's a stunning feat of web interaction. The video, in keeping with band's preoccupation with the suburbs and childhood on their new LP, begins by inviting you to type in the address of your childhood home. The video then plays on multiple pop-up screens, interspersing Milk's footage with images of your childhood neighbourhood culled from Google Street View. An odd, nostalgic experience. Try it out at thewildernessdown town.net.

Sik stuff from precocious teen

I was never hugely into video games as a child so, in turn, I'm now not nostalgic for their rudimentary graphics; however the recent trend for retro gaming is put to good use in a new video for Po Po. The clip for "SikSik Sik" made by David "Scattle" Scatliffe uses eight-bit graphics, which marry nicely with the stuttering synthetic beats. Watch it at maddecent.com. The song comes from Po Po's Summer Mixtape, which is free at ind.pn/9KcM6I, while more of Scattle's work is at mouseno. blogspot.com. The other thing to note is that David Scatliffe is only 16 years old, which is impressive and annoyingly precocious in equal measure.

l.ryan@independent.co.uk