Album: Beth Ditto, Beth Ditto EP (Deconstruction)

Described by her as akin to a sanctioned, temporary affair adding extra spice to her long-term relationship with Gossip, this four-track collaboration with Simian Mobile Disco plays to a different side of Beth Ditto's talent – one where her usual raw-throated rock power is restrained within the context of scudding electropop grooves. Though inspired by Grace Jones's new-wave disco torch-songs, the results are markedly dissimilar: Ditto's far too engaged a singer to emulate Jones's aloof cool, her tremulous vibrato animating "I Wrote the Book" and the uncertain emotional terrain of "Do You Need Someone", where she has to "bite my tongue, my feelings under lock and key". Indeed, over the languid, loping synth-bass groove of "Goodnight Good Morning", she sounds uncannily like Madonna.

DOWNLOAD THIS: I Wrote the Book; Goodnight Good Morning