This is just fantastic. The kind of summery pop that The Thrills or Teenage Fanclub made, but with a delicious, almost Scandinavian, indie edge... Six friends from Oklahoma City, aged between 20 and 23, The Uglysuit use gossamer-light melody that builds into gorgeous, anthemic (Built To Spill, My Morning Jacket) guitar- and piano-laden dreams - wall-of-sound climactic experience that always ends too soon. This is an album that feels like love, like infatuation and like a breezily beautiful autumn day. Standout tracks include ...And We Became Sunshine and Happy Yellow Rainbow, which could sound twee in any other hands, but here the joy is handled tastefully. The Uglysuit don't do anything that's different or now, but what they do is so perfectly judged that they're forgiven instantly - in fact, you'll fall so deeply for this debut album that they're allowed a lot of room. For fans of The Flaming Lips, The Shins or Wilco, The Uglysuit's self-titled first album is a real treat.

ACE rating 9/10

Seems everywhere you look now, there is an outstanding band. Grand Theft Bus, who hail from Canada, are like a non-pretentious Shins, a modern Steely Dan – the music is intelligent, and so naturally laid back that it draws you in for a closer listen. Automatic is a hypnotic piece, with a wonderful melody, and some elegantly great musicianship. Grand Theft Bus have been described as a jam band for indie fans – there is something to that. The band aren’t all about attitude, and posing. Instead, the music seems to flow, take its own directions and a somewhat natural course. Winning awards in Canada is one thing, but this isn’t distinctly Canadian music. Any fan of Minus The Bear, Hey Mercedes or even The Police would find a lot to like in this third album. It improves on its predecessors by focusing in on the songs a lot more, tightening up the ideas and nailing the dynamics perfectly. Lovely.

ACE rating 8/10

It would have been hard to predict the response that Beirut would achieve with their (his) debut The Gulak Orkestar. It was one of 2006's best albums - a debut full of promise and mould-breaking folk rock that drew from hundreds of years of Balkan folk, Baroque and an acute indie ethic. Its successor, the Flying Club Cup added in baroque folk music from France and the Balkans to good effect although it was somewhat more patchy. This third album, in effect a double EP, recaptures some of the drama of the first – it is more expansive, although still heavily reliant on the brass and strings that gave the first albums their unique sound. The first side, March of the Zapotec, is just as effective as he has always been. Electricity makes an appearance on the second of the two EPs, but not entirely successfully – while Condon may be a master of rhythm and melody in the way that, say, Sufjan Stevens can be, when it comes to a mixing desk (in his parents’ house), his experiments sound more cack-handed – songs like No Dice come off like some dodgy Pet Shop Boys piece. If you have the option, save yourself the download of the second disc.

ACE rating 6/10