POPPIN' FRESH

This week we imagine the singles as Archers' characters, which will make perfect sense to those readers who listen to Radio 4's superlative tale of everyday folk, but will baffle everyone else. You should still read it though, otherwise we have wasted a whole morning, and some of these records are - shock! - really quite good.

KILLERS - SPACEMAN

Totally true not-very-interesting pop fact! We remember exactly where we were when we first heard The Killers' Somebody Told Me. We were in the bath, and do you know, risked certain DEATH by hopping out of it without drying our hands to slam down a wet fist on the radio's off button. This, as you might expect, is yet another mess of wafer-thin lyrical ideas and keyboard-based pomposity. THERE IS A REASON WHY THEY COULD NOT GET SIGNED IN AMERICA, readers, and it reflects on Britain very ill. FYI the above video is a piss-poor quality fan upload - not that it will make any difference.

If this single was a character in The Archers, it would be

Shula Hebden Lloyd

Boo hoo, my name's Shula and I love God more than everyone else in the village and it's weally, weally not fair because the motorcyling vicar now loves that HINDU COW more than me. Too annoying by half, 'bloody' Shula should just hurry up and find herself a new parish and stop spaffing on about it to anyone who comes within three feet of her bell-ringing, meddling hands. She is silly, self-important and in our humble, just a little bit racist. NOT THAT WE ARE SAYING THE KILLERS ARE RACIST, EVERYONE - CALM DOWN, etc.

MORRISSEY – I’M THROWING MY ARMS AROUND PARIS

Had this been released in 1984, it's unlikely that the fan-boys would have retained their adulatory prefix. But as it is, this is a same-old-not-bad effort from someone who really should stop banging on about how nobody loves him (even if that is what we love him for), especially now he is a) really quite hot and b) has the kind of audience who would form themselves into human umbrellas were his famous hair ever to be in danger of getting soggy. Anyway, all rather spineless, but in a pleasant enough way.

If this single was a character in The Archers, it would be:

Nic Hanson

Walking flannel/craptacular single mum Nic is so mahoosively devoid of self confidence she might as well be poor Wiw-l-yam's second child. Can't drive, can't take a compliment, can't handle her kids, whiney, wingeing and shit with money, the only thing Nic has to 'recommend' her is that she gave toddling irritant George a smack once in a car park. Pathetic!

THUNDERHEIST - SWEET 16

No videothing, so we will do our best to explain that Sweet 16 is a snappy little tune about doing rude things when you are only just legal. For the uninitiated, Thunderheist are a Canadian electro duo who - as you will see from the above picture - like to make their logo out of Skittles. And even if they didn't make pictures out of sweets, this would still be all sorts of exciting, being as it is full of booty bass on the Eli Escobar remix (which you can get for free here, at NME). If you get the 12" you also get the instrumental and rather housey Whateveruneed - and again, if we only like this because of the Skittles/running words together to make new ones, that is, essentially, our problem. Also: quite rude.

If this single was a character in The Archers, it would be:

Annabel Shrivener

Resident sexpot and bitchily competive jogger Annabel makes waves presumably because she is the only woman in the village not wearing practical jumpers and ill-fitting jeans which do not flatter the wide arses of Ambridge's other women. All of whom must be the size of Africa, fed as they are on Tom's award-winning sausages washed down with Clarrie's home-made marmalade. At least, that is what we imagine. Rather like Krystal Carrington with her high-falutin' head for business and bod for sin, Annabel also has a fearfully dirty way of intoning sentences about protection orders on local bird's nests. She is, to use modern parlance, well fierce.

CRYSTAL STILTS – DEPARTURE

Funny story - about four months ago we tried to arrange an interview with Crystal Stilts and it was quite some disaster from start to finish. One of those horrorshow occasions in which one is expected to arrange the actual interview with the actual band themselves (and can we just say this is more often than not a very bad idea, they being far too busy creating/doing naughty things/not keeping regular hours and therefore falling off radar every five minutes), we found out that poor JB Townsend only had a prepaid phone. This we found rather inappropriate because their album is really quite good and they deserve pots of cash or at least a nice iPhone with a squillion free minutes on it. So that is what we told him, and we are not sure he was terribly amused. ANYWAY, this is really rather fantastic - sounding very sullen and like it was recorded at the very bottom of Mount Doon (Doom? - we can never remember), with all the mics covered in ten tonnes of wool. Does not have a proper video, so we have used a rather lovely one in which a cute little girl dances to another of their 'tunes'.

If this single was a character in The Archers, it would be:

Debbie Archer

Good old Debbie is in Germany now with secret boyfriend Marshall, but is totally ace because a) she doesn't take any shit from all-round fuckface Brian and b) because she is played by our Fantasy Sister, Tamsin Greig.

FIRST AID KIT - YOURE NOT COMING HOME

The above youtubulation is a complete charm, from the amusing shot of the chatshow host right at the beginning down to First Aid Kit's flannel-shirted, lanky loveliness. This is a sad song about being a put-upon house-bound ladyperson with an drunken twit for a husband and then leaving him by train. And by God, it's good - a sort of I Will Survive as channelled by two wood-dwelling, Country-fied Swedish sisters which is 100% guaranteed to steal your heart, if you have one.

If this single was a character in The Archers, it would be:

Matt Crawford

Straying as we are into remarkably inappropriate comparisons, all you need to remember is that Matt is a grade-A business badass. And if we use the 80s fashionable trope for bad actually meaning good, you should understand us when we say that Mr. Crawford, utter shit to brilliant Lillian that he is - is 100 storeys of wrong. Which means that First Aid Kit are a Corbusier continent of brilliance.

The Archers on the internets. If we find a way of shoe-horning it into another feature, believe us, we will do so. And *NB* - do bear in mind that not one of this week's singles have been compared to Owen Taylor, so it is not all bad.

EDIT: First Aid Kit is actually not out till next week (on Wichita, thanksforasking), but you will have to excuse our giddiness because it is so flipping good.