A hypnotic mixture of beat-laden trance, sensuous pop, sample collage and noise experimentalism, Doldrums come to us by way of Toronto, with numerous cult favorite releases, including a split with Portishead on XL, three 7" records on We Are Busy Bodies, and a VHS split with Parrot Talk.

It's fair to say Strange Talk is passionate about pop, right down to the lyrics tattooed across the forearms of singer Stephen Docker. You can hear this passion and precision in their debut single 'Climbing Walls', a song that took them from a bedroom studio in Melbourne to shooting a film clip on a over-sized chess board in the middle of the Mojave desert.

Strange Talk is Stephen Docker, a former classical violinist from the Australian Youth Orchestra, and Gerard Sidhu, a DJ/Producer. At a house party in Melbourne, drunken bonding over pop heroes Michael Jackson and Queen – as well as new production outfits like Justice and Starsmith – inspired them to combine their musical abilities towards a sound that was classic in its approach but forward thinking in its production. The spark that flew was the track 'Climbing Walls'. This revved up dance pop track delivers what Neon Gold calls "an unwavering refusal to settle for mediocrity… with vocal chops that will set hearts on fire" – being the first melody ever written by Stephen, and his debut singing behind a microphone!

'Climbing Walls' hit No.1 on the Billboard's Uncharted Charts, No.1 most popular on Hype Machine, airplay on Radio 1, Triple J and Nova (as well as being Unearthed by Triple J), and receiving over half a million views on YouTube.

Hundred Waters was woven together under the spell of a viscous Floridian summer, from a home on its own in the woods amidst a city. The music sets sail into ancient seas, subtly shifting through worlds of howling silence, borealic tales, and briarpatched exotica, ultimately arriving into the arms of a caring embrace.

Nicole Miglis narrates the journey alongside Trayer Tryon, Paul Giese, Zach Tetreault, and Sam Moss, in Hundred Waters' debut release. The album was composed, recorded, torn apart, reshaped, spat on, shined, and tucked in at their Gainesville home through a method of remote collaboration and thoughtful solitude, reconvening at the helm to gather their threads into rope, and pull.

Written, performed, produced and mixed by Duologue, so goes the credit on A-B the impressive futuristic electro rock infused second E.P from London based five-piece Duologue. Hot on the follow up to eponymous first E.P this new release is yet further proof of this experimental bands ability to fuse audio technology with good old, fashioned heart felt songs. Melodies melt into glitchy beats and bass heavy riffs buoy up guitar solos, seamlessly soaring into crescendos of dance friendly rhythms all pulled together by singer Tim Digby-Bells emotion ridden vocals.

In between retreating to the wilds of South England to write and produce the band have found time to self curate a number of sell out show's with the likes of Matthew Dear, Darkstar, Breton and Worship as well as joining Metronomy for his Shepherds Bush Empire show earlier this year. In addition the band remixed a counterpart E.P to their debut release and collaborated with up and coming director and VJ, Lewis Kyle White ( 2 Many DJ's, Radio Soulwax, Crystal Fighters) to produce four remix videos currently being hosted online at duologuemusic.co.uk.

"I guess we would consider ourselves musicians and producers in the way we approach a track, we write the song, break it apart and build it up layer by layer, using as many new sounds and beats as possible and pushing it as far as it can go."

Deceptively named, Duologue's first incarnation was born from the meeting of musicobsessive's techno DJ and beats programmer Toby Leeming and guitarist vocalist Tim Digby-Bell whilst studying in Edinburgh. Through a shared love of obscure electronica, subversive Detroit techno as well as the more usual suspects like Aphex Twin and Radiohead the pair went from bedroom experimentalists to recruiting fellow childhood and university pals Seb Dilleyston (violins) Ross Stone (bass) and Toby Lee (lead guitar) to form a fully fledged band.

'A-B' is Duologue's second EP and arrives on the tail of a limited edition 10", eponymous E.P and it's self-remixed counterpart E.P that spawned collaboration with graphic designer and VJ Lewis Kyle White resulting in the remix videos that are currently hosted online at duologuemusic.co.uk. The bands ambitious writing; Leeming's hypnotising heavy beats and poet Digby-Bell's fractured lyrics, which often tell of their frustration with the monotony of the everyday. Their escapism is the excess of noise and they clash together opposites by challenging genres, as in the haunting electro ballad of 'Endless Imitation', and the rock dance track of 'Push It'.

'A-B' is a taster of this unique, band's ability to throw you in the audio tumble dryer and leave you euphoric, elated and always thinking.

Mozart’s Sister is the captivating solo project of Montreal’s Caila Thompson-Hannant. Staggering between beautiful, bursting synth-filled pop melodies and the complicated, often harsh consequences of reality in her lyrics, she unites these elements together in an explosion of vibrant emotion and hypnotizing intensity.

Taking shape in early 2011, Mozart’s Sister thrives on complex layering, melding upbeat, sparkling dance loops with tremendous, belting vocals, only to morph into pulsating sci-fi drones and dark rhythms atop sensuous, assertive vocals.

This sense of unexpected fluidity and change flows throughout Dear Fear, her self-recorded and self-released debut EP of 2011, dancing between the rhapsody and destructive components of sex, love and relationships. Labeled “bedroom paranoia,” Dear Fear explores the wild, untamed energy manifested within the confines of one’s own space and the inner power developed to break down these walls. In “Don’t Leave It To Me,” Thompson-Hannant belts, “I wrote this song after I met you,” a statement that Pitchfork praises, “if it resulted in a pop gem like this – you’re left feeling grateful for that chance encounter.”

Influenced by mainstream R & B and Prince, ‘90s trip-hop and Björk, and the current shift in electronic music, Thompson-Hannant incorporates this sense of collage into her work, constantly transforming her voice and sound against a gorgeous, direct aesthetic with an uncontainable passion and sense of expression. Mixed in with the sassy, riveting confidence of defining groups like TLC and Salt-N-Pepa, Mozart’s Sister is also both influenced by and a part of the groundbreaking modern Montreal electronic music scene, characterized with the same vigor and charisma as such female contemporaries she’s shared the stage with, Grimes and tUnE-yArDs.

Look for an upcoming release from Mozart’s Sister in 2013, one that leaves behind the bedroom paranoia and grasps control with a glittering, entirely arresting radiance.

Widely tipped as one of the breakthrough acts for 2011, High Highs are about to deliver on that promise. Their self-titled debut EP, out in November, serves up four tracks of sparse, ineffable beauty, featuring exquisite falsetto harmonies from founders Jack Milas and Oli Chang, and an extraordinary blend of acoustic-guitar textures and synthesized atmospherics.

At once ancient and modern, intimate and otherworldly, ‘High Highs’ is so uniquely spellbinding, it’s sure to establish the young trio as pack leaders among 2012’s new breed, in advance of their debut full-length, due in spring.

Oli and Jack first started making music together as High Highs back in 2008 in their native Sydney, Australia. The pair met while working at a music production company, at the time Oli was performing in another band but was drawn to Jack’s purely acoustic style of writing. The pair hit it off immediately and soon plunged into a world of emotive songcraft and sonic invention.

“From the beginning,” says Oli, “our music has been about escapism. It gives us, and hopefully our listeners a chance to get away from their everyday lives. We definitely go for a ‘warm bath’ kind of sound.” The basis of the group always lay in marrying Oli’s interest in the electronic sound of heroes like Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada, with Jack’s penchant for classic acoustic songwriters like Neil Young.

“There’s obviously a lot of scope for what you can do with a laptop and a keyboard,” muses Oli. “It’s more straightforward which palettes of sound work with acoustic guitar, drums and voice. That helps narrow it down a bit. In terms of creativity, it’s great to build walls around what you’re doing, like building a box that you have to work within. Everything has been done a million times over in a million different ways, so it’s great if you’re in a box, and you have to be really creative within that box, to make something engaging and interesting.”

For Jack, singing was not something he’d instantly been drawn to. “I just had so little confidence in my voice,” he humbly confesses, “so singing in falsetto was the only way I knew how to get any vague vibe out of it. I also have a very limited range in my chest voice, and so I had to sing in falsetto to get anywhere near where most people sing. I had no choice.” “For me,” adds Oli, “singing in falsetto, you don’t have to be confronted with yourself. Your speaking voice is you. With falsetto, you can become someone else. You don’t have to deal with listening to yourself, it’s almost like you’re listening to someone else – this high angelic sound. That’s like an escape in itself.”

With these tentative ideas hatching, the whole project was thrown into jeopardy in ’09, when Jack took an opportunity to work in New York. Six months later, though, Oli also relocated to New York. Settling in Brooklyn, the duo redoubled their focus on High Highs. There they joined forces with drummer/producer Zach Lipkins and the band became a going concern. “It’s awesome that Zach is a really talented producer as well as a great drummer, especially because a lot of the time the drum arrangements are really minimal and heartbeat-like. He really knows how to ride a gentle dynamic wave.”

Through summer 2010, Jack, Oli and Zach played around New York as a three-piece, which pushed them to build up their sound. “We signed with the Windish Agency, and they got us a lot of really cool gigs, which put us through the test of playing to some pretty crazy Friday night drunk crowds. That was interesting because we had to figure out ways to get this delicate, soft music to have impact in that kind of atmosphere. We’d be going on after a heavy metal band, or a synthy pop-rock thing, and it was like we had to match that in scale, and create a big sound, and cut through the noise. We realised there has to be scale and dynamics to the performance, within its small intimacy, because if it’s all too quiet and hushed and atmospheric, it doesn’t engage us or the listeners.”

From there, things started to move very fast for them. They became a blogosphere sensation, and were duly tipped for the top in 2011 by key authorities such as NME, The Guardian and Spinner. They soon hooked up with Elton John’s management company, Rocket Music Entertainment Group, who look after the likes of Lily Allen, Ed Sheeran, Oh Land and Friends, amongst many others.

Thus ensconced, High Highs were able to hone and complete their first tracks – not with the aid of some external producer, as they mixed and produced their EP themselves. But although they have amassed a great deal of musical experience in their day jobs, the band is a playground for them, where they can be as open-ended and spurious as they wish.

“I’m not really into writing some kind of narrative in my lyrics,” says Jack, by way of example, “they’re more just like impressionistic images. If you’re lucky enough to go down the rabbit hole of creating a song, you come out the other end, and the lyrics just kind of are what they are. Looking back at them afterwards, they could mean a whole lot of things. A lot of the songs are about being stuck in one place, and looking out. Then there’s some stuff about childhood, freedom, and sailing. I can’t really provide a further explanation, because I really don’t know what they mean. They’re just feelings.”

Similarly, according to Jack, the band was named fairly randomly, after a song Jack’s father played him once by Alabama indie-rock couple Viva Voce. ”We’re not paying the ultimate compliment, like we love the song so much,” Jack laughs. “It might be weird to call our band after a song I may or may not like. We just thought it sounded kinda cool.” “Plus, literally” adds Oli, “we sing in high voices”.

For all its apparent studied, slo-mo grace, their music is, they say, full of happy accidents, such as the remarkable ringing sound on ‘Open Season’, which is a celeste, a mandolin, a guitar and a piano, all playing the same notes in time. With further live experience accrued supporting Jose Gonzales and The Radio Department, the band’s career trajectory continues to spiral on skywards.

They’re not afraid, however, of the pressures that success may bring to bear on them: after all, they’ve been making music to order for some years now, they’re used to that kind of stress. And the attendant rigours of touring aren’t too big a worry, either. Quite apart from them both having crossed to the other side of the world to realise their shared dream, Oli has already travelled the world substantially: born in Sydney, to an Australian mother and a Chinese father, when he was aged 8 his family moved to Bangladesh for three years, and then moved around Asia, till he was 19. He then shuttled between Oz and Japan till High Highs fully convened in Brooklyn.

Right now, the trio are enjoying the popular confusion about where they should be pigeonholed. “People have compared us to Simon & Garfunkel,” says Oli sceptically, “because we’ve got that very quiet singer-songwriting thing, but with the harmonies and an occasional borderline-psychedelic sound. My friends have also jokingly said we’re like an ambient Hall & Oates, but I don’t know if there’s anything in that.”

Probably not, but High Highs’ warm bath really doesn’t need a category. You just jump right in, and enjoy.