1 Kleerup (featuring Robyn), "With Every Heartbeat." This buzzy house track from Sweden leaked online a few months ago (it's also slated for Robyn's forthcoming CD, though no U.S. date has been announced), and it's hard to imagine a more indelible pop song emerging in 2007. Heartbreak dance-pop, as sublimely wistful as early Pet Shop Boys. (Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0) (myspace.com/kleerup)
2 Lil Mama, "Lip Gloss." Not the first sparse hip-hop track modeled on a "We Will Rock You" aesthetic (see also J-Kwon's "Tipsy" and Clipse's "Grindin'"), but probably the most sonically extreme. Contents include: a vocal, a syncopated hand-clap rhythm and a 1-2 stomp from the bleachers. Still, a little goes a long way, and this 17-year-old MC out of Brooklyn amply fills in whatever space the rest of the track leaves open. (4.0) (myspace.com/lilmamaonline)
3 Dollyrots, "Because I'm Awesome." Snarling, electrifying, girl-fronted guitar anthem from Joan Jett's Blackheart label, and the first punk song I can think of where "You're an academic superstar!" is intended as a compliment. (4.0) (myspace.com/thedollyrots)
4 MC Lars, "White Kids Aren't Hyphy." Tracing the rhyme scheme of Skee-Lo's 1995 hit "I Wish" ("I wish I was a little bit hyphy/I wish E-40 liked me"), Lars spins a geeky satire on the Bay Area hyphy scene that's deeper and funnier (not to mention funkier) than Weird Al's 2006 crunk gag, "White and Nerdy." As with most Bay Area rap, you'll still need a road map to find your way through it; after laughing at the line, "I tried to ghostride the whip/But I hit a tree," I promptly checked Wikipedia to find out what the hell it meant. (3.5) (myspace.com/mclars)
5 Sharam, "P.A.T.T. (Party All the Time)." Sharam Tayebi, one half of house duo Deep Dish, doesn't so much remix Eddie Murphy's ultracheesy mid-'80s dance hit as perform a frontal lobotomy on it, reducing it to the phrase "my girl wants to party all the time" (repeated ad infinitum, like a nerve ending from the brain that managed to escape the operation). First time I heard this I thought it was a cruel joke—on Eddie Murphy and on anyone who fell for the song 20 years ago. By the third or fourth listen, I couldn't tell if I was in on the joke or the butt end of a different one. (3.5) (myspace.com/sharamdish)
6 JoJo, "Anything." One of the best voices in teen-pop today wreaks desperation over a looped sample from Toto's "Africa," which never sounded so hypnotic, except maybe when it showed up in the guise of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" (which I originally mistook this for). (3.5) (myspace.com/jojoonline)
7 Muscles, "Ice Cream." Edgy, jittery, no-wave house slop from Melbourne, Australia, with phased-out vocal weirdness and a bizarre murder-on-the-dance-floor vibe ("He could have a knife/Stab me in the gut"). Bloodshed is averted in the end, of course, by ... wait a second, ice cream? (3.0) (myspace.com/musclesmusic)
8 Arctic Monkeys, "Brianstorm." There's an emotional barrier I can't overcome with these guys. I admire everything I've heard but haven't really loved any of it. The first 25 seconds of "Brianstorm" (not a typo, just a bad pun) is an undeniably furious guitar assault: surf god Dick Dale mashing it up with Sonic Youth. Then the song kicks in, the singer puts a filter between himself and the microphone, and I find myself once again just not giving a toss. (2.0) (myspace.com/arcticmonkeys)
9 Natasha Bedingfield, "I Wanna Have Your Babies." Coming off "Unwritten," the most luminous pop single of 2006, Bedingfield jumps in the ring again with what may or may not hold its ground as the most irritating single of the current season. Forget the suggestive title and the expert backing track—you first need to make your way through a series of hiccups and giggles, each of which sounds like it was transcribed before it was uttered. (1.5) (myspace.com/natashabedingfield)
10 MC Rove (and friends), "Karl Rove Raps." More novelty rap, live from the White House Correspondents Association Dinner and available at a YouTube near you. The difference between this and MC Lars isn't just that the deputy chief of staff doesn't have a clue about rhythm; it's that he undoubtedly woke up the morning after and loved himself to death for performing what can merely be racked up as his latest public atrocity. (0.0) (youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5RD9BhcCo)