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Jess Mills‘ first slice of chart power came earlier this year when she was the featured vocalist on Breakage’s Fighting Fire. I think this type of thing is described as post-dubstep or some nonsense, but let’s all be honest here… this is stone cold trance.

Jess was a member of a slightly blogged up group called His Girl Friday which is an awesome name for a group and should be reused immediately. Now she’s hanging out with this Mr Breakage and making songs that don’t sound like much else at the mo. I think it’s the spaced out echoey effects on her vocals that really get me.

Her new single ‘Live For What I’d Die For’ is out August 1
Jess Mills - Live For What I'd Die For by Jess Mills

And make sure you listen to her awesome cover of The Cure’s ‘A Forest’. It’s a joy to hear a Cure cover that isn’t in the bossa nova style for once and instead sounds like something you might be sliced to death by a serial killer too. Love.

p.s. Florrie can bore off already

Emeli was the female voice on Chipmunk’s Diamond Rings, Wiley’s Your Woman and is someone who pretty much everyone on the urban scene has been telling me is going to be huge for the next year.

Heaven is her debut single and a pretty powerful opener. I can’t do better than the press release which says it has ‘lavish strings, bombastic horns and trip hop beats’. It’s like a more pumped up version of Yasmin’s Finish Line. Poor amazing Yasmin.

No time to write anything else as I’m off to Liverpool to see Nicola Roberts play Radio City Live. Scream!

More from Mr Disco Pop.

THIS IS BIG (I have completely lost the ability to write so apols).

Those soaring strings. That huge, uplifting chorus. “Redemption Days” should be a killer of a radio hit this summer. It’s the type of song, like Aloe Blacc, that should run across the board, from Radio 2 to The Hits to Kiss.

I expected Josh to be late 20s with his deep, rich voice, but instead he’s only 19. Born in South London I’ve been told he’s had a pretty awful life so far (there is a strong chance that I’ve confused this with a film I watched last week), but now with Wu Tang Clan producing his debut album and Ghostface featuring on this, his debut single, things might slightly be on the up (!) This is also the best thing Ghostface has done since this gigantically epic piece of pop.

If anyone has seen my vocabulary please send it back.

This is amazing

Pretty much everything about this makes me happy.

Dancing on her Own – wearing Spice Girl shoes – nicking a man and dishing out love advice.

I’m in the States this month and am so, so tempted to do an internal and go see the Katy Perry / Robyn show. The combination of the big release moments in ‘Dancing on my Own’ and ‘Firework’ would probably be so intense I’d explode or at very best throw up. Being made to throw up is exactly what pop music in 2011 should I think make you do. Awesome.

Carly Simon’s ‘Why’ is a proper, proper tune. Written by Nile Rodgers no less, Carly released it to celebrate my birth in 1982 to little effect in the States. Here in the UK though we loved her new strutting abilities, got on board with the disco and took it top 10. I’m going to try this walk out on Oxford Street next week.

After a bit of, looking back, bloody amazing ‘you say Glamma, I say Kid’ action in the 1990s, it hit #10 again, and now 11 years later it’s back in the form of ‘Don’t Know Why’ by new Mercury girlgroup Soundgirl.

Commercial radio is all over this song, and rightly so – it’s a shame it doesn’t look like the BBC are going to follow. Three school friends, the girls are 14, 17 and 18 I think and look like a really convincing, colourful, new girlgroup – a far cry away from the overstyling of Parade. Another absolute sound of summer 2011 for me.

As one YouTube commenter said: My speakers dont go loud enough!!!

Summer’s here – it’s crying out for a hit and this should do exactly the job LDN did a couple of years ago.

I’m properly obsessed. This is Rizzle Kicks – Sylvester (!) and Rizzle. Both 19 from Brighton, the pair were signed to Island earlier in the year and are getting set for their first major release on June 12th. Horns!

(I have no time to blog, I have an awesome new job but time zapping!)

“Like Janis Joplin if she’d swapped the Southern Comfort for a flat white and a Francois Truffaut boxset, Alice’s brand of rock’n’roll is rowdy and raucous, but pinned down by a super chic sophistication.”

Alice Gold’s official biography is filled with a large amount of singer-songwriter guff as above. She’s been touring with Noah & The Whale, The Dears and The Bookhouse Boys – the whole set up is very credible snoozeworthy singer songwriter. I don’t become very excited when songs are ‘written after a heady weekend at Camp Bestival’ either.

So for now I’ll just take her exceptional debut single for what it is without worrying about the rest of it. It’s just a gorgeous song from a girl with a brilliant pop star name that slots nicely into a playlist next to Shivaree’s spine-tingling ‘Goodnight Moon’.

It’s amazing what difference a year and a half can make. Remember Dionne Bromfield? Dionne is Amy Winehouse’s god-daughter and first appeared in summer 2009 signing to Amy’s own Island Records imprint Lioness Records. Back then she was a really cute little girl with a great soul voice, a covers album and a future promising great things.

That future has come quickly. Now 15, she’s just released the video for ‘Yeah Right’ the first single from her 2nd album. Newly confident and beaming with pop star qualities, Dionne looks classy and sounds great in this sassy girl-power anthem. Sounding like a Ronson production, the song has got quite a Duffy feel to it and is good, but not jaw-droppingly so. It’s enough though to suddenly totally reposition Dionne as an artist with serious potential. ‘Yeah Right’ also sees the UK debut of adorable US rap youngster Diggy Simmons – the son of Run DMC – and the pair look super cute together, even if they are bitching at each other!

Scattering icy disco dust all over the place, ‘White Horse’ is the first single release from Jessica 6‘s debut album ‘See The Light’.

Led by vocalist Nomi Ruiz, the band are all ex members of Hercules & Love Affair and were given a helping hand by Anthony Hegarty when he tipped them for future success in the Guardian last year. It’s very Horse Meat Disco (making me want to go tonight!) and happily slots into the whole nu-disco vibe with a large helping of early 90s house vibes.

Download a free MP3 of the single over at RCRD LBL

When Sparkadia released their 2008 album Postcards, they were a duo making punchy guitar music. Soon after the album release the band fell apart, but singer Alex Burnett decided to keep the name and (amazing quote from the press release) move to East London with wild ideas! Sound the Dalston klaxon.

Thankfully the music hasn’t gone day-glo but it’s certainly gone a little more pop, a little more musical theatre and has had the echo cranked up. ‘Mary’ is the first single from the new project and as PaulyG said, it’s almost on the verge of going into a ‘Muse-style wig-out’ at any moment as it builds from a grumpy wallow to a dramatic, unable to cope, facepalm via a rather good keychange. Released on Feb 14 via the new label from Hoxton clubnight Gold Dust, you can download ‘Mary’ free below.

p.s. Don’t be alarmed by the words Dalston or Hoxton. It’s more Welwyn Garden City.