[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkkJCSduFS0]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OET8SVAGELA]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KkUeRPjc-Y]

Okay, it’s the weekend, and I’ve been spending too much time on YouTube. There are some fine beards on display, the kind you only get in indie circles, and of which I am envious, because my girlfriend won’t let me grow one.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jgmgE-QDzA]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqPAQT1YldI]

I don’t know about you, but I’m loving the folk-pop revival. If it’d happened ten years ago, I might have been trendy at the right time. Oh well.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHbtR8uO81M]

I remember seeing Fyfe live a few years back, when the Guillemots were just starting out, before the BBC were all over them. It was in a tiny room in Nottingham, one of those murky, sticky-floored indie venues, full of guys and girls in converse, big beads and fancy hats, and the Guillemots were just a phenomenal bunch of musicians. Fyfe seemed one of the most expressive artists I’d ever seen, a passionate multi-instrumentalist. This video seems pretty mild and mainstream by his former standards, but it could be a good move for his career. Talented chap, anyway.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBPt2kfqi90]

Via the medium of Jools Holland, here are an interesting new synth brigade from the industrial north, but they’ve made it onto all the 2010 tip-lists, so I hope they don’t disappear into obscurity.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3yAJeDSzdg]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUcdobQxrRU]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io_pXLtY0R0]

The vocalist reminds me of the dude from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the difference being we can hear what this guy is singing.