Growing up in public is never easy. After all the attention that The Vaccines attracted with their post-Strokes smash-and-grab debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? they have plenty to prove with their follow-up. Do they duplicate the Ramones-meets-Ronettes-in-the-Hadron-Collider template or go for something different and sophisticated? Well, they’ve got a new look, ditching the leather for denim and growing their hair, and the sequel certainly sounds different, but whether it is more sophisticated is another matter entirely.

This month sees an audacious attempt to showcase British dancehall music, when the Cargo venue in Shoreditch hosts the multi-artist revue Showtime!. The Heatwave collective have brought together vocalists from various UK underground scenes, linked by a strong influence from the high-energy Jamaican sounds of the past 30 or so years. While many of the artists involved have found success in crossover scenes like rave, jungle, grime and garage, the appeal of dancehall itself (also known by the overlapping terms bashment and ragga) has traditionally been restricted to predominantly black audiences.

Dubstep is everywhere – and if you will excuse a little self-promotion I have, in my small way, helped this state of affairs come about. The bass-heavy, rhythmically exploratory and very British electronic dance music genre has now – via Magnetic Man and Katy B – proved it can produce bona fide top-10 hits, and it has become the de facto sound of every summer festival to boot, while still keeping both feet in the underground clubs from whence it emerged.

Today Rinse FM, London's leading pirate radio station, announced it has been granted a legal broadcast licence after 16 years of illicit transmissions. It's almost impossible to overstate how potentially momentous this event is for the UK's most vibrant and promising music scenes, and what opportunities it presents for artists, personalities and record labels ranging from the deep and experimental to the most flagrantly commercial. From the rumbustuous, teen-friendly fun of Scratcha's breakfast show to the experimental electronic jazz and funk of Alex Nut at Saturday lunchtime to various hard and dark grime and dubstep shows - as often as not playing exclusive music fresh from the hard drives of its creators that may never even become commercially available - it is a brilliant representation of London's cultural vitality in the 21st century.