The playlist: pop – Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique, Foxes, Kiiara and more

Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique – Love Is Free ft Maluca

It’s only been a year since Robyn last released a collaborative EP/mini-album in the form of the Röyksopp-produced Do It Again, but here she returns with another one, this time under the guise La Bagatelle Magique alongside touring keyboardist Markus Jägerstedt and late producer Christian Falk. While it’s not the full Robyn album most discerning pop fans have been lusting after since she concluded the Body Talk trilogy in 2010, it will likely have to do, at least until 2016.

That’s not to say it’s disappointing – far from it, in fact – it’s just that lead single Love Is Free eschews the general public’s favoured Robyn approach of tear-stained bangers, rushing headlong into the sort of big 90s throwback rave track that takes over your body and never lets go. Opening with juddering vocal samples, a smattering of cowbell and a steady electronic pulse that skitters all over the shop, it thrives on its splenetic nature. Cut-up vocal snippets careen into strange sonic squiggles as Robyn half-raps lines like “I’mma give it to ya baby / I’mma give it like a mother”. Around the halfway mark, however, there’s a slight shift, as if the dancefloor clears out to catch a collective breath, before one last go around.

Cornelia – Not In Love

With the imminent arrival of Apple Music and the general rise of iTunes as the dominant force in music consumption, it’s always nice when someone comes along with some new way of owning music. Yes, you can still get a CD, a nice vinyl box-set, or, if you’re feeling really nostalgic, a cassette tape, but Swedish singer and label owner Cornelia has gone one step further.

For £39.99, you can own her debut album, Balun, as some sort of audio poster you can stick on the wall. Apparently the poster uses “technology enabled by integration of conductive ink, capacitive touch and conventional electronics to provide a musical experience in a new format, combining science, design and music.” This is all very well in theory, but as the old saying definitely doesn’t go, nobody wants to listen to a rubbish poster. Thankfully, the majority of Balun, which was released on Monday, is in the upper reaches of the good category, particularly, lead song Not In Love. Built around zipping synths, padded pitter-patter beats and Cornelia’s delicate vocal, the song’s pillowy softness masks a lyric that flips your expectations as she coos: “I am not in love with you,” throughout the chorus.

Iris Gold – Goldmine

Often out of necessity, pop stars have a bit of a change. Obviously the likes of Madonna, Kylie and Lady Gaga switch up their looks for every album, but it also works for new acts who, for whatever reason, haven’t yet had the chance to shine. So it is with Danish singer and rapper Iris Gold, AKA the artist formerly known as Mercedes. Born in Denmark’s notorious Christiania commune, Mercedes’s love of music was cemented after Lauryn Hill freestyled a song about her hair during a Fugees gig. Later, she moved to London to work as a dancer before meeting various record producers and songwriters, including Rodney Jerkins (Darkchild) and a certain Lady Gaga (Iris apparently recorded Gaga’s Superstar at some point).

So despite the songs being of a high calibre, various attempts at a launch as Mercedes never quite worked out – so now she’s back as Iris Gold. According to her Facebook page, she’s been in the studio with the likes of Anita Blay, AKA CocknBullKid, and Nicola Roberts collaborator Dimitri Tikovoï. There’s a lot to love about her characterful new single, Goldmine. Deliciously summery and laid-back at a time when most pop seems to want to make you have a heart attack, it pushes her passion for 90s hip-hop and old-school pop front and centre without feeling like one big slice of nostalgia.

Foxes – Body Talk (Bakermat Remix)

Southampton-born, east London-based singer Foxes, AKA Louisa Rose Allen, only released her debut album, Glorious, in the middle of last year, and she’ll put out her second before December. Nowadays, the pop landscape is furrowed by so many that you can’t afford to hang about, especially if you’ve tasted some chart success (the album went top 5 in the UK).

But while a lot of Glorious was made up of reworked songs taken from various EPs and buzz tracks scattered across two years of taste-making, the disco-tinged fuzz of new single Body Talk feels like a more confident direction, and the result of focused recording sessions aimed at making a cohesive body of work. It’s also the sort of song that feels ripe for a dancefloor-ready remix or 12, not least because the central lyrical conceit – men can be buggers sometimes, so let’s just dance all our cares away – sounds even better when clamped to a ridiculous rave synth. Thankfully, Dutch producer Bakermat agrees, his housey remix (premiered here) underpinning the original’s sense of longing with a gently chugging guitar figure, before that none-too-subtle synth skips into view for a wordless post-chorus that demands some sweaty pogoing.

Kiiara – Gold

Kiiara, who is from Illinois, is fairly new to this whole being-an-artist thing. Her brand-new Twitter account consists of retweets and semi-apologetic missives such as: “Not used to attention … and I don’t have much to say haha … I can give you music though”. In fact, music is still a bit of a sideline to her main job in a hardware shop. If debut single Gold is anything to go by, that’s going to need to change pretty soon.

Produced by SZA collaborator Felix Snow, Gold – which is taken from the forthcoming Meet Me in the Cornfield EP – sighs and pops in all the right places. Kiiara’s hushed falsetto slinks in and out of pin-drop beats that sound like rainfall on a metal roof. As this is the era of the nonexistent pop chorus, Gold carries all its hooks in its verses, while the chorus bit lifts snippets out of those verses and chops them up to make a multi-layered mass that becomes strangely catchy as the song slinks along.