The second album of LA band Best Coast arrives in mid May. I’ve previously written about the lead off song (and title track) “The Only Place” which continues in the vein of their debut album in offering lashing of West Coast surf pop meets garage rock - with newly added hints of country rock and Neutral Milk Hotel. The track can still be downloaded free at bestcoast.us.

With increasing regularity, I have found myself awestruck by some technological advancement of the modern age.

The days of sitting around the record player have fallen further into history, alongside fireside story-telling, as more music listeners seek solo aural satisfaction. Sales of headphones now outstrip those of speakers by almost two to one, according to the analysts, GfK, and Asda.

Some of us meet our partners in boozy bars, others come together over art or books – and some, this St Valentine's Day, will be drawn, magnet-like, to their future bit of stuff's electronic device.

Speech Debelle was already being written off as a bad joke within hours of winning the Mercury Prize, filed alongside Gomez, Roni Size and Antony and the Johnsons as an example of the career-ending curse of that particular gong.

Where are you now and what can you see?

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, many people's thoughts are turning to matters of the heart. So it's timely that the performance poet Francesca Beard and the micro-valve surgeon Dr David Hildick-Smith got together to launch the Body Pod The Heart today. This is the second in a new series of podcasts that focus on different parts of the body, made by an artist in collaboration with a scientist.

Pop, deprived of fresh meat, feeds on itself

When Susan Bullock delivers the traditional rendition of Rule, Britannia! at this year's Last Night of the Proms it will come as a ringing endorsement of her continuing pre-eminence as Britain's leading dramatic soprano.

Richard Taylor and David Wood's musicalisation of L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between for the West Yorkshire Playhouse marks a further departure in the development of that many-faceted genre we call musical theatre.

There isn't an area of music where Richard Blackford has not exercised his craft.

"Technicolour for your ears" - that's how The Independent described the John Wilson Orchestra's 2009 BBC Proms tribute to 75 years of the MGM musical.

Welcome to The PROBIZ Football Podcast – a one off special for The Independent looking ahead to the new Premier League season.

Sarah Tynan is one of English National Opera's great success stories.