Album: Laura Veirs, Tumble Bee (Bella Union)

At a time when the pre-teen imagination seems increasingly colonised by talent-show ambition and pre-pubescent sexualised pop, the charming, gentle children's singalong folk songs revisited on Laura Veirs's Tumble Bee will come as a welcome relief to many parents.

When she sings "way down yonder in a minor key" in the nonsense-chant "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O", the minor in question is as much a matter of age as pitch. Set to light, sparkling arrangements of banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, concertina, twanging mouth-bow and comically honking horns, these songs are populated with a bucolic menagerie of foxes, dogs, birds and little horsies, while the occasional use of foot-stomps and crowd-chant choruses on songs such as "The Fox" and "Jump Down Spin Around" lends a benign campfire charm to the proceedings.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Little Lap Dog Lullaby; Why Oh Why; The Fox