Michael Kiwanuka I Need Your Company Although he's a 23-year-old from north London, Kiwanuka has the classic, heartfelt soul voice of a Bill Withers or Donny Hathaway. This orchestrated second track from his Tell a Tale EP is typical of his sublime 1960s-sounding retro soul. Dave Simpson
Kitty, Daisy & Lewis Tomorrow Despite their youth – their parents play in their band – the Durham siblings are surprisingly sophisticated in their treatment of rockabilly and swing. This self-written song is inescapably retro, but also utterly fresh and in the moment. Caroline Sullivan
Guillemots I Must Be a Lover This bittersweet highlight from Guillemots' terrific third album sees Fyfe Dangerfield battling depressive thoughts and eventually winning. It's lovely, life-affirming stuff. Chris Salmon
Craig Taborn Avenging Angel One of the great younger cross-genre jazz pianists of the age, Taborn is usually heard in partnerships – with saxophonists James Carter, Tim Berne and Chris Potter, or in his own amazing trio. This is a pretty stripped-down version of Taborn's vision (he plays it at London's Vortex on 25 May) exploring the piano as much as an abstract sound-source as a melody or harmony-generator, but his musicality and his attention to fine detail is hypnotic, as is his remarkable sense of compositional narrative within a completely improvised performance. John Fordham
The Long Ryders Sweet Mental Revenge One of history's unjustly neglected groups, the Long Ryders sprang from LA's paisley underground scene and quickly moved from neo-psychedelia to a tough form of country rock. This Waylon Jennings cover from their debut full-length, Native Sons (newly reissued) is alt-country before alt-country even existed. Michael Hann
Tamikrest Nak Amadjar Nidounia Sturdy desert reggae from the young guitar band from the Sahara who are so impressively following Tinariwen's lead. It's on their Toumastin album. Robin Denselow
The Good Natured Skeleton This one-woman synthpop act mixes wide-eyed, bouncy hooks and mildly dark lyrics, and the result is a delightful kind of bubblegoth, like Siouxsie Sioux meets Sophie Ellis-Bextor at a Twlight convention. Tom Ewing
