How many times have you heard an Oakland (California) based alternative folk band sing about the rough life of fishing off of Alaska? I certainly never have until Port O'Brien came along with their CD that swept me off my feet, All We Could Do Was Sing.

How does this happen you ask? Well, the male counterpart of the original duo that made up the band, Van Pierszalowski, lives in the Bay Area but would go up to Alaska every summer to work on his father's commercial salmon fishing boat while his female counterpart, Cambria Goodwin, would tirelessly work as a head baker. During this process of long workdays and heavy labor, both managed to write music and become inspired to make an eleven track emotion roller coaster album that they self released with a newly added rhythm section.

It starts off with the cheerful mood rising song "I Woke Up Today" that fills my head with images of high spirited Alaskan fishermen skipping onto their commercial fishing boat ready to go catch their fortunes, then instantly shifts gears to them being surrounded by ocean, defeated and disheartened by poor numbers in the much slower track "Stuck on a Boat," where you can heart the loneliness of the fishermen longing for their lovers back on shore. The somber mood continues as the fishermen drink to pass the time, suffer from bad weather and hopelessness,and battle with the idea of dying at sea and their own gloomy thoughts throughout the rest of the ride.

I usually don't even like any form of folk either, so this is an alternative folk album that can appeal to you even if you don't think it would.

Utada Hikaru (宇多田ヒカル in Japanese) was the typical Asian-American university student. She was born in New York, grew up in a musical family, and was a student at Columbia University up until a few years ago. She was basically unknown in her native land of the United States.

This is all in stark contrast to Japan, where she is the largest pop star ever. Her first album, First Love, is the best selling album ever in Japan. But Utada's best album is her third release, 2002's Deep River. Ritch, lush, and deeply personal, Deep River contains some of the best singles ever penned in Japanese, which help propel it to platinum status the first week it was released.

Deep River is the rare album that manages to sound cohesive yet contain both slow and fast songs. The first single, "Final Distance," is a slow love song penned in honour of Utada's ex-husband. Strangely, the song is also about a girl who was stabbed to death in a school incident in Japan. 

"Traveling," the album's second single, couldn't be any more different. Instantly upbeat and bubbly, it is pure pop at its best. It also has one of the craziest music videos ever made. "Sakura ドロップス (Sakura Droppsu / Sakura Drops)" is another slow classic that really shows off Utada's pitch-perfect voice.

While Deep River might have been released over six years ago, its impact is still felt in Japan.

I am in love with this London band, The Chap. Now this might seem like a careless overused hyperbole on my part, but I am serious. Their new CD Mega Breakfast has both a simple but complex sound, combined with lyrics that are short and vague but say a lot, and makes you want to dance but not all at the same time. That requires true skill.

Not to mention how incredibly strong all of the eleven tracks are, leaving you dumbfounded in the end with how there can still exist bands with enough talent to pull off an entire CD with no filler tracks and not sound repetitive at all. To start off, they hit you hard with a dance beat with sparse heavy guitar samples and a simple chorus that just repeats heartthrob over and over again in "They Have a Name" that lets you know, it's time to dance, but that hot guy you see on the dance floor? Watch out for him.

Then they trick you and switch to the more mellow but still powerful "Fun And Interesting", singing a super egotist who believes he should be cloned because the world deserves it, but with a chorus reciting this belief in an almost religious experience, along with a mix of minimalist electronic sounds, rock beats, and even some beautiful classical touches.

The rest of the CD makes you want to dance like an awkward spaceman while smiling at their absurd lyrics and deliciously refreshing sound. Your inner eccentric child will be happy you listened.

Some albums you fall in love with immediately. Others take a few listens for you to understand what the musician was going for. French DJ group Teenage Bad Girl's 2007 album Cocotte falls into the latter camp. A first listen reveals a sound similar to other Paris-based DJs like Justice and Boys Noize — it's all very aggressive, in your face, and completley vocal-less.

But then the differences begin to stick out. For one, Teenage Bad Girl is much more comfortable with bass. In fact, their tracks positively humm with heavy basslines, especailly "Break Out The Wheel," which could possibly damage lesser speakers. Second, Teenage Bad Girl seems more comfortable to take some risks and strive for the experimental. Their lead single, "Fuckin' Frog," is definitely not the traditional electronic song. In fact, it has a lot in common with early Orbital — at least at first, until the heavy bass and house influences kick in heavy half-way through. 

In fact, the North American release of the album comes with a remix of the song "Cocotte" by aforementioned Boys Noize. The original song has a slower tempo, and more ambient noises, whereas the Boys Noize remix is all noise, all the time.