Still based in the North-east of England, brothers David and Peter Brewis are on album number four now while still denying that Field Music is a band at all.

South Africa-born but Sydney-raised Jonti Danilewitz is ludicrously well-connected (he's worked with Mark Ronson, Albert Hammond Jr and Santigold), but debut album Twirligig is all his own work.

Before recording this year's acclaimed album D, the prolific White Denim snuck into drummer Josh Block's home studio one last time to initiate second guitarist Austin Jenkins into the band.

That Westlife have called it a day came as a shock to their fans – and to everyone who thought they already had. Will Dean reveals the other rockers rolling on under the radar

Brandreth the Younger has daddy's diction – but not his jumpers, thankfully

Doris Day, the US singer who scored her first chart hit in 1945, has announced a musical comeback at the age of 87. The Hollywood star, famed for playing sassy yet clean-cut all-American girls in the Fifties, is releasing her first new album in nearly two decades.

With his tenor voice and exciting trombone playing, Bob Flanigan was a key part and long-serving member of the Four Freshmen.

The success of Steely Dan was built on the unusual, inspired, occasionally acerbic songwriting of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen and their all-encompassing perfectionism.

In 1964 three unrelated Americans, Scott Engel, John Maus and Gary Leeds became the Walker Brothers, and once settled in London had No 1 hits with "Make It Easy On Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore". Their slow, cavernous, heavily orchestrated recordings were highly distinctive and Scott and John's voices merged together well. In 1965-66, Walkermania was not far behind Beatlemania.

The easy-going and avuncular Keith Fordyce was the highly reliable host of the chaotic live, beat music programme, Ready Steady Go!, which started in 1963. Part of its attraction was the potential for things going wrong and Fordyce was the ideal person to restore order.

Slight of frame, sensibly dressed and bespectacled, Ben Folds takes to the Hammersmith Apollo stage, stands at a grand piano, and plays a monumental two and a half hour set which brings the house down. Now 44, Folds still has more energy and enthusiasm than men half his age, and can rock harder than most of them to boot. Appearances, it seems, can be deceiving.

Originally planned as an album of melancholy piano ballads, Hotel Shampoo turns out to be brimful with the kind of inventive musicality we've come to expect from the Super Furry frontman, but less excessively rendered than usual.

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