Album: Empire of the Sun, Ice on the Dune (Virgin)

The formula wasn't broke, so Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore ain't fixed it.

After a swirling overture, the headdress-happy duo crack back into "Walking on a Dream" mode. Ice on the Dune – almost too perfect a title for an Aussie band with a glacial Euro aesthetic – is a seamless suite of elegiac synthpop, with fairydust-flecked melodies, a perpetually peaking bass end, chord changes that reach into your heart, and fantasising falsetto vocals. Gorgeous.