There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022, the spotlight has been on her. She supported Halsey and Olivia Rodrigo on tour, worked with Beabadoobee, Skrillex, and K-Pop sensations Le SSerafim, and had a song on the Barbie soundtrack. It’s a lot. Perhaps, judging from this mixtape – a 20-minute filler release we might once have called an EP – she’s spreading herself too thin.

After kicking off with the psychedelia-tinged “Sgt. Major,” they keep coming. A string of songs as Sixties-influenced as they are edgy and propulsive. The tempo may not be speedy but there is always forward motion, even in a song where different sections unite in a portmanteau structure.

20 years on from their first appearance on record, the seventh long-player from Canadian indie-art-rock behemoths Arcade Fire comes off the back of four consecutive UK album chart-toppers.

Sixes and Sevens is a surprise. A big one. Since leaving Siouxsie and the Banshees in September 1979, John McKay has largely been a mystery. On record, the only suggestion this influential guitarist had continued with music was the EP his post-Banshees band Zor Gabor issued in 1987. Otherwise – nothing.

Does it spark joy? Yes, definitely...and maybe we music critics should ask the Marie Kondo question more often. London-based vocalist/lyricist Georgia Mancio and New Zealand-born, US-based pianist, arranger and composer Alan Broadbent have been prospering as a songwriting and performing partnership for more than a decade and have so far produced three strong albums. Wednesday night’s concert at Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho was part of the launch tour for the third album, A Story Left Untold.

PUP’s Who Will Look After The Dogs? is a raw and emotionally charged album that captures the band’s chaotic spirit while showing clear growth in both sound and subject matter. Across 12 tracks, the Toronto group delivers a mixture of driving punk energy, wry humour and moments of vulnerability. It is a loud and heartfelt record that might not hit the heights of their best work, but still leaves a strong and lasting impression.

“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year.  While living in Paris a few years ago I shared a flat with an older French lady. We loved to chat every night when I came home from work, but one time she told me a story that stayed with me about her late husband, who was an abusive alcoholic. When he died, his only final wishes were to be buried. So of course, she had him cremated.

On the eve of recording an album at Real World Studios, guitarist Adrian Utley and the American trumpet player Eddie Henderson brought their “project” to the hallowed ground of Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, along with four other top-class British musicians.

Wow, can it really be 40 years since Solitude Standing, the second studio album by Suzanne Vega who put the 1980s folk revival on the map. “Fast folk” the New York scene was called, and its voices emerged from much the same Greenwich Village cafes which were the proving ground for the 1960s revival that introduced Bob Dylan to the world. Plus some newer ones, notably the Cornelia Street Café, founded in 1977 and run by a Brit named Robin Hirsch until absurd rents forced its closure just a few years ago.

Over its crisp 32 minutes and nine songs, Altogether Stranger embraces electropop, lo-fi terrain and gothic solo contemplation. By deconstructing modern R&B, the upbeat “Come on” is as close as it gets to pop’s mainstream. The unifying factors are Lael Neale’s way with a tune – she writes a memorable song – and her penetrating yet translucent voice.