The Organ

Grab That Gun (Too Pure) £12.99

The spirit of Joy Division has been much invoked of late - not least by the Editors, the finest vintage dour-pop revival band going. Until now. Five Canadian women have just filched that thorny crown with their striking debut. A big hit at the recent South By Southwest music conference, the Organ take Joy Division's curdled guitar nagging and the Cure's 25-year-old basslines and lace them with a vocal that is the spit of Debbie Harry on a fistful of downers singing the Smiths. Once the frisson of recognition has abated, Katie Sketch's desolate lyrics cement the realisation that the Organ are rather more than the sum of their hip influences.

KE

Pink

I'm Not Dead (La Face) £12.99

Having established herself as the raw, resilient voice of the broken-home generation, Pink's fourth-album persona is a compelling mixture of sensible and sassy. The ultra-poppy single 'Stupid Girls' is a protest song by stealth, laying into celebrity cultdom while having a chorus that even Paris Hilton could remember, while 'The One That Got Away' proves she can send most other female popstrels up in a puff of smoke. If she'd only ditch the frothy co-writers - including Britney Spears cohort Max Martin - for ones with a little more bite, she could have a career as long as Madonna's.

LH

Be Your Own Pet

Be Your Own Pet (XL) £10.99

Nashville teenagers Be Your Own Pet release such a concentrated burst of energy on their debut album that it sounds as though they've been saving it all up for the event. They blitz through 15 sometimes dodgy but sometimes sublimely furious punk songs in half an hour. You can almost hear 17-year-old singer Jemima tearing her hair out as she yowls 'Bog' (a song about smashing the cistern, as opposed to the system), 'Adventure', and 'Fill My Pill'. They only let up from the driving pace on 'October, First Account', which recalls the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at their most reflective.
LH

Calexico

Garden Ruin (City Slang) £13.99

Calexico, the Arizona duo who have found a hearteningly large worldwide audience for their mix of Americana, jazz and world music, inch towards the rock mainstream - though entirely on their own terms - on the follow-up to last year's excellent collaboration with Iron and Wine. It starts off quietly with an acoustic guitar and Joey Burns's country-singer croon, swelling mid-record into angry but beautifully arranged noise, then mellowing into sultry balladry ('Roka' is sung in Spanish, 'Nom de Plume' in French), before unleashing the emotional rock of closing track 'All Systems Red'. Their least patchy, most rewarding album yet.

LH

Richard James

The Seven Sleepers Den (Boobytrap) £12.99

Now that zany acoustica is back in vogue, Welsh pastoralists Gorky's Zygotic Mynci look like a band ahead of their time. After 15 years, the group have, none the less, decided to put themselves on hold, allowing members to pursue solo projects. Bassist Richard James has arguably trumped band mate Euros Childs with this dainty debut. At 41 minutes it's a slim volume, but full of lo-fi charms. There's the odd blast of psychedelic barn dance, but it's mostly given over to delicate love songs whose silky vocal harmonies and dreamy, inventive atmospheres belie a hard, occasionally vengeful centre.

NS

Oscar Peterson Trio

At the London House (Lonehill Jazz) £19.99

The amount of sheer creativity, allied to unrivalled virtuosity, makes the music on this triple-CD set almost too much to take. It may have been recorded in 1961 but it could just as well have been last week, going by the freshness and sparkle of the whole thing. Peterson and bassist Ray Brown constituted one of the great jazz partnerships and the interplay between them is simply phenomenal. The addition of drummer Ed Thigpen intensifies the unrivalled swing for which Peterson has always been renowned. To have this landmark recording available again is an event in itself. No one with a taste for great jazz should miss this.

DG