As subtlety in popular music becomes increasingly worshipped by heritage-led taste arbiters, we should relish proper shouty moron tunes. Few come more shouty and moronic than LMFAO, a Los Angeles duo named after the text abbreviation for "Laughing my fucking arse off". They comprise Berry Gordy's youngest son Skyler (AKA Skyblu) and his grandson Stefan Gordy (AKA Redfoo), renowned for goon club anthem "I'm in Miami, Bitch". They claim their second album is "more refined" - but it isn't unless your idea of refined is pole dancing to Limp Bizkit.

This is where the delirium kicks in. Tired but happy, the attendees started the third day of Sónar festival slightly boggled by how to pick and choose from the strange delights on offer. Saturday was when the true musical variety of the festival was displayed: straight-up hip hop to eye-popping South African tribal dance displays, balmy ambient revivalism to apocalyptic techno, heartbroken electronica to deranged prog rock: it was all on offer...

The Meltdown Festival's tribute to Tony Wilson was a lot like the charismatic post-punk legend himself: funny, eccentric, obscure, populist; all over the place but never dull. Wilson died in August 2007 and this event was a reminder of his reputation as one of music's most fascinating post-punk provocateurs, giving the world Joy Division, Happy Mondays and more. It was also a reminder of his reputation, as poet Mike Garry put it, as a "knobhead". As someone who appeared on regional news programmes quoting Wordsworth while hang-gliding, Wilson could be spectacularly uncool.

Dubstep has now permeated pop. Drum and bass was the last British underground bass music to rub up against the mainstream but back in the mid-Nineties the major labels didn't know what to do with it. Apart from launching Goldie's career and leading David Bowie up another excruciating dead end, it failed commercially. Dubstep, on the other hand, has been eagerly embraced by US stars - Jay-Z, Rihanna and Britney Spears, to name three - and UK acts such as Chase and Status, Skream, and Magnetic Man have stormed the charts. This assimilation is invigorating but sometimes, when the latest dubstep-flavoured Euro-pop nugget hits the airwaves, one pines for the raw deal. This is where Joe Muggs steps in.

At one level the day of the single is gone - the 7-inch, the CD, the physical format - and yet, at another it's more relevant than ever. Sure, any track can now be downloaded from an album and hit the charts but singles, downloads - chosen representative songs - still give the best snapshot of what an artist is capable of. With this in mind, theartsdesk gleefully tucked into the latest batch of releases which includes Depeche Mode, Arctic Monkeys, pop, rave, folk and a whole lot more besides.

Hip-hop soul, chart rave and Balearic beach-pop with a 1990s flavour, synthesiser-led space-rock, a localised Goth-electronic revolution, Kenyan Kamba beats, an eccentric attempt at bringing opera into pop, and vibrations from dubstep's deep roots. As ever, theartsdesk's singles round-up takes you round the houses, up some dead-end alleys, down the docks and along sweeping avenues you never knew existed, hopefully dropping you home exhausted but happy with a selection of strange and evocative new music in your pockets. We aim to please.

One of the most powerful things about the dubstep movement – aside from the monumental sound itself – is how its rootedness has provided a platform for a generation of artists to launch out into other things from. The spaciousness, drama and flexibility of the template has allowed maverick producers like Mala, Shackleton and Kode 9 to create their own unique sound worlds that bridge the gap between clubland and the avant-garde, far more than, say, drum'n'bass ever did. And now Bristol-based producer David Corney can be added to that list.

There's something about this album that feels as if it's already existed for a long time. Full of post-apocalyptic images of smoke, dust, decay and weakness, and themes of struggling individuals and implacable political forces, it thematically fits with the works of a long line of acts who positioned themselves against the fear of nuclear armageddon and the seemingly immovable Conservative government in the 1980s. Its mix of Caribbean-influenced soundsystem culture and dub poetry with an edgy alternative experimentalism, too, harks back to the post-punk genre collision of Dennis Bovell, On-U Sound, Renegade Soundwave and the like, 25 or more years ago.

This month, what's on offer in theartsdesk's Singles and Downloads veers towards the fresh and new rather than the tried and tested. We'll always chew over whatever's out there and right now these nine tunes speak loudest. Starting with carefree New York electronic punk frollicking, we also take on violent grime, Sixties-style guitar pop, Brit-pop hip hop, uncategorisable grunge cabaret and multifarious flavours of dubstep. Dive in.