Radiohead - In Rainbows

The way Radiohead are distributing In Rainbows - via their website only, and for a price of your choice - has turned the entertainment world on its head, but the music is their least revolutionary since Kid A. It's fantastically good, though, and grows with each play once you accustom your ears to Thom Yorke's whine and the brilliantly technical over-layering of the music. With great style, it pulls off the sensation of a musical fog gradually lifting to reveal astonishing clear skies; the way both Nude and All I Need slowly build towards climaxes rank them alongside the band's finest moments. In Rainbows justifies Radiohead's belief that the album still matters as an art form - they resisted iTunes' advances because they disagree with the policy of downloading single tracks. Here, the album gets simpler as it progresses, and the layers start disappearing until we arrive at three final stripped-down and magnificent songs. Obscure and uncompromising they may be, but Radiohead are still a people's band.

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Sugababes - Change

Five studio albums are a lot for a pop act - especially one who've twice changed line-ups and now feel more like a brand than an actual group. Indeed, you cannot help but get the impression that the story is petering towards an end. Here, the change that's signified by the title is a move away from the edgy, 80s-sampling trance-pop that has kept them fresh. Instead the 'babes have taken their sound further into bland cabaret territory with the spark and edge that made them credible and interesting, as well as accessible, surgically removed. That's not to say there aren't enough hits here to keep them in the singles charts for the next six months (Denial and 3 Spoons Of Suga are both superior offerings to that recent number one, About You Now); it's just that even their better moments now sound like a band on autopilot.

Change is on Universal

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Georgie James - Places

Like an American version of The Magic Numbers, this Washington DC group trades in gorgeous boy-girl harmonies and a lush blend of classic pop guitar sounds. Unashamedly infectious and Monkees-like, were it not for the occasional mentions of the internet (on the wonderful More Lights) and iPod culture (Comfortable Headphones) you could be convinced that this is a long-forgotten album by contemporaries of the Mamas and Papas or Simon and Garfunkel. The sunny melodies hit a peak on Need Your Needs - with its brilliant shifts of tempo and girl group handclaps - and the frothy escapism of Cheap Champagne, but there's fabulous retro pop wonder throughout.

Places is on Saddle Creek

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Band Of Horses - Cease To Begin

Straddling the borders between geek pop and dusty Americana, this South Carolina band have hit on a sound that's both weightless and earthy. Opening track Is There A Ghost presses all the same buttons as Snow Patrol's finest moments - a sky-soaring ballad that reaches a triumphant pitch - but elsewhere the mood is more subtle, autumnal and twilit. No One's Gonna Love You is all shimmering guitar and vocals that float like feathers on the breeze and, like many of the album's best tracks, features a beautiful change of pace when you least expect it. Cease To Begin's major triumph is that it makes melancholia seem beautiful and life-affirming rather than tragic or maudlin. Hear it, and we guarantee you'll also want to seek out the band's equally excellent debut, Everything All The Time.

Cease To Begin is on Sub Pop

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The Hives - The Black And White Album

The only real survivors of the 2001 garage rock scene (whither The Datsuns now?) Sweden's Hives won over both Britain and America with their cunning combination of riffs, stagecraft and an excellent line in matching black suits. For their fourth album, they have advanced considerably - and not just sartorially, though the 'Ivy League bully' blazers they often sport are most fetching. Realising that the public may have tired of their straight-up-and-at-'em bombast, the band has ensured that the album is littered with conceptual pop tunes that recall a long-forgotten era of novelty Europop hits by the likes of Trio and Plastic Bertrand; so Puppet On A String is a Munsters-esque prowl, T.H.E. H.I.V.E.S. like a cartoon version of Jane's Addiction, and Bigger Hole To Fill is The Strokes with an injection of Vitamin C. In between, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist leads his band through their normal Stooges-inspired territory with added gusto. It's fun, silly but - against the odds - still rocking.

The Black And White Album is on Polydor

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How I Became The Bomb - Let's Go

From the rhinestone-stitched heartland of country music, these Nashville mischief-makers wear Edwardian foppery and create a frantic pop blast that recalls US new wavers Devo and The Cars. And on one track - the wondrous Minute Romance - they sound like Buddy Holly being attacked by robots. It couldn't really be much further from Dolly Parton - which is possibly the point. Such a sound could make the band sound pompous, were it not for the fact that every track on this mini-album is absurdly catchy. And, as titles such as Fat Girls Talkin' Bout Cardio and Kneel Before Zod indicate, they are not entirely serious. But it's not all throwaway. Killing Machine deals with the de-humanising realities of war but still manages to attach the message to perky hook-laden melodies, while Secret Identity has all the same indie synth-pop thrills as The Killers. Quirky but loveable.

Let's Go is on Goldrush

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