Not a cruel summer at all...

Viewers, this is looking to be a strong summer for pop music. Here are a few examples of why.

Alphabeat "DJ"
This army of Danish pop soldiers knocked out a fairly good song, "Fascination", a couple of years back. Their latest album, The Beat Is..., explores a more "synthy", Europop side with some fantastic results. The new single "DJ" (also called "I Could Be Dancing", for those of you who can't remember proper song titles) is precisely the sort of feel-good song you want to hear on a lush summer evening by the pool. It's optimistic and relentlessly catchy, and in these times who doesn't want to hear music of that nature?




M.I.A. "XXXO"
Two years since she jetted from the blogosphere to the top 10 with the ubiquitous "Paper Planes", everyone's favorite Sri Lankan popstar is back with a new record. The single "XXXO" is a dark, throbbing piece of electropop that takes a different step from her trademark hip-hop-meets-world-music sound, and yet it sounds exactly like the sort of song you'd expect from M.I.A. This should be massive.



Mini Viva "One Touch"
This song was released on Monday and its chart results are less than stunning, which will sadly mark the second flop single in a row from Mini Viva. Which means they will probably be dropped from their label, or certainly eschewed to the back of their promotion line, and that means that we might possibly not get to hear a full-length Mini Viva album later this year. Which is certainly a disappointment as their three singles have all been fantastic and an album full of Xenomania-helmed Mini Viva songs would be guaranteed to knock any pop fan's socks off. That being said, we're throwing Mini Viva a bone here by naming "One Touch" one of the songs to enjoy this forthcoming summer with.




Kylie Minogue "The New Album"
Much to our impatient dismay, we've heard nothing of Kylie's forthcoming single "All The Lovers" other than an instrumental snippet that promises to be quite good. We think Kylie's brand of dance-pop music is the perfect soundtrack for this time of year, and we're looking forward to Aphrodite being the album that really sets summer 2010 alight.