The Computers – dreadful (and deceptive) name, decent band – score instant points for starting their second album with a rockabilly romp called "Bring Me the Head of a Hipster", and do nothing to lose that goodwill.

Laura Marling

Up-and-coming Brooklyn four-piece TEEN (pictured) have turned to Kickstarter to fund the recording and release of their new Carolina EP – kck.st/11KIK5u. Things are looking good with the group already surpassing their $5,000 target ahead of their donation deadline tomorrow. The all-girl quartet offered up a sample track from the proposed EP in the form of the title track, a nice stew of dreamy psych-pop and krautrock, which can be heard at snd.sc/Zv2Yt3.

Shannon and the Clams

This follow-up to the original 2006 Rogue's Gallery sea-shanty compilation is slightly less salty but just as broad-ranging musically.

From henceforth, all commercial-pop snobs should be obliged to listen to the Canadian sisters' seventh album.

Crowd surfing continues with the band off-stage, a topless girl balances on a mate's shoulders and the bouncers look panicked. This year’s hotly tipped saviours of guitar rock take all this in their stride, at least until a chaotic finale, suggesting either they learn fast or this is typical of their gigs.

When Elektra's Jac Holzman first commissioned future Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye to compile Nuggets, back at the start of the Seventies, the intention was simply to collect overlooked Sixties gems worthy of rescue from oblivion.

The Mercury Prize isn’t much to get excited about these days. Despite its judges’ best efforts, it’s an increasingly predictable marketing tool for a more upmarket demographic than the Brits.

Ariel Pink’s latest outing with his band finds him scaling the foothills of musical competence on tracks like “Farewell American Primitive” and “Only in My Dreams”.

“Was it too quiet for you, asshole?” Lou Reed enquires, putting all the dripping contempt he can muster, which is plenty, into demolishing a fan who unwisely, ironically yelled “Louder!” after tonight’s first song.

In his Eighties pomp, Jackson contributed a superb arrangement of "Round Midnight" to a Thelonious Monk tribute album, but this new homage to Ellington works as superior adult-pop rather than jazz.

The Hives' fifth album has been five years in the making. It's the time it takes to make a classic, the natty rockers tell Gillian Orr