Blue Ruin, the American thriller which won the coveted FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes last year, will amaze. It stars actors you don’t know, made by a director you don’t know yet Blue Ruin is proof of life beyond Hollywood: this is a tremendous independent film. We’re not talking something shot through an iPhone with one location. We’re talking an entertaining, incredibly smart and deftly-made story with heart, a message and memorable characters and scenes. Clue: when the cinematography, script, acting and direction are mesmerizing, you’ve got a winner.

Just in case anyone thought the hype surrounding Gloucestershire-born Spanish/Jamaican singer FKA Twigs was based only on her unique looks, startling styling and slightly silly videos, this album begins with her voice alone. It too is utterly singular, a choirboy-like chant layered over itself like some New Age confection, before the sci-fi whirrs and booms of "Preface" remind us that we're in the currently hyper-fashionable territory of reconfiguring US R&B through the prism of British soundsystem music post-dubstep and grime.

The Eighties revival, as is now well documented, has lasted far longer than the actual Eighties. And Elly “La Roux” Jackson is a vital figure in maintaining its durability, coming as she did to massive fame just as the effects of the turn-of-the-millenium club scene electroclash were wearing off, and making sure that plinky-plonky electropop keyboards, icy attitude and sculpted hair were kept on the cultural agenda.

Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti are a living lesson in the rejuvenating power of remaining experimental in art. Their music holds its own alongside the young guns of electronica, who indeed frequently idolise them, and in person they frequently seem as excited about possibilities and open to new ideas as artists just starting out.

There's been a quiet but nevertheless palpable sense of anticipation surrounding psych-folk enigma Linda Perhacs' first-ever European tour. Comparatively low-key advance publicity certainly proved no impediment to a sold-out house for the recent opening date at Berlin's Kantine am Berghain, a somewhat drab and unprepossessing bunker in the shadow of the city's notorious techno temple.

The past year or two have seen a staggering return to popularity of house and techno music in the UK. For the first time since the mid-1990s, records which have grown steadily through club play over many months are breaking through into the charts on a regular basis – but just as exciting and significant are those records that remain resolutely underground. Because it's there that you start to see the real reason for the longevity of these sounds – both well over a quarter of a century old.

Dev Hynes's path of artistic development is one of the most pleasing in 21st century music. The flamboyant black indie-kid risking life and limb to ride the local buses growing up in Hackney, who channeled his frustration at the lack of a place for him in the world through the awkward, aggro, occasionally inspiring but awfully named early 2000s electro-punk trio Test Icicles, has since then through sheer force of will carved out a space within the music world where he can be himself.

I am increasingly finding it almost impossible to express just how bored I am by Miley Cyrus. I mean, seriously, are we really in such a fix that this guff is a serious talking point? A second-generation celebrity and former child star seems to be going off the rails a bit? OH REALLY, GOSH, THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE, PLEASE TELL ME MORE. A young female celebrity is flashing her parts? SWEET BABY JESUS ON A BORIS BIKE THIS IS AMAZING. A white pop star is crassly adopting the tropes of black culture? WOW NO WAY, YOU'RE LITERALLY SHITTING ME.

It was a bittersweet kind of evening. Walking down Brick Lane, it was striking how Caucasian, tanned and healthy most people we passed were, and we couldn't help wondering if the Bangladeshi locals were starting to get priced out of their own neighbourhood, while the artists and party-weirdos who ironically made the place such a tourist destination are fading away, sloping off to Dalston and Peckham to continue the gentrification process all over again.

Somewhere round about 10 years ago the concept of “folktronica” settled down to become a relatively stable area of music. Fringe its appeal may have generally been, but it incubated some major talents who are still making great music, and for better or worse primed general music fans' ears for the sounds of folk and thus arguably laid the ground for the monstrous success of Mumford & Sons.