As promised, more from Germany and something by Wir Sind Helden (We Are Heroes). As with Klee, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly fascinating to write about them, they just make sweet, catchy indie-pop records. Von Hier An Blind is the title-track from their chart-topping second album which gets extra points for its Tintin-In-Tibet-inspired cover art.

Wir Sind Helden - Von Hier An Blind

Acrobat-turned-soap-star Jeanette Biedermann ranks alongside Kate Ryan and compatriot Sarah Connor as one the the great, truly mediocre, Euro-pop singers. Her name's quite well known in discerning pop circles but i can't imagine many people outside of Germany could name one of her songs. There's nothing terrible about her, she's just slightly dull. That said, How It's Got To Be, from her album Delicious, is rather good. Of course, pinching your tunes from Tchaikovsky helps.

Jeanette - How It's Got To Be


Hamburg's Boytronic were one of the biggest German synth groups of the 80s. Enormously camp, they worked with Bobby Orlando, dressed up as sailors and danced like idiots, just as all good eighties pop groups should. They continued with a limited degree of success into the mid-90s and then disappeared for seven years. In 2002 they returned with the stunning Autotunes - adding incredible layers of depth and gravitas to the sharp electro-pop tunes. This is what all boybands should sound like after a spell in the wilderness. I over-use the word "anthemic" but it's rarely more appropriate than when applied to A Song For The Lonely.


Boytronic - A Song For The Lonely


It was a beautiful summer day in London yeasterday. I couldn't decide what to listen to while walking home so i set my MP3 player to random and ended up with Faking The Books by Lali Puna. It fitted perfectly. A lot of people regard the kind of studious, glitchy electronica that Germany leads the world in as music to be analysed and admired, almost in laboratory conditions - too clever and too cold to fully lose yourself in. I've always seen it as capable of producing some of the most spellbinding, immediate pop you're likely to hear. Perhaps no song illustrates this better than Der Augenblick by the remarkable Barbara Morgenstern, from the album Fjorden.

Barbara Morgenstern - Der Augenblick