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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

It’s been a seemingly effortless rise to the top of the dance music pile for London’s eccentric electro-pop quintet Hot Chip since arriving on the scene with 2004′s The Warning. It was 2006′s ‘Over and Over’ that would propel them head over heels towards the beginnings of dance music superstardom, with its devilishly catchy beats and rhymes providing a smart satirical retort to the critics who’d branded them ‘boring and repetitive’ on album number one.

After a short hiatus- whilst Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor explored some interesting extracurricular side projects- Hot Chip return with album number five, a collection of songs bursting at the seams with infectious and emotive pop hooks and synths that, whilst it showcases Hot Chip’s amazing affinity for drawing on a vast collection of disparate influences, heavily recalls 80′s synth-based troupe New Order during their Power, Corruption & Lies phase.

Hot Chip has gotten decidedly less hook-y and hilarious over the years. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily, but it’s interesting to listen to this, their fifth proper album, and compare it to a band that once said it would “break your legs, snap off your head.” People grow up sometimes, and for a lesser group, that might equate with boring. Luckily, that’s not the case here. Songs like classy, building opener “Motion Sickness” prove that many of the less interesting cuts on 2010’s One Life Stand were an anomaly. Dance jams like “How Do You Do” and...

Hot Chip have released a video to accompany their new single 'Flutes'. The track is the first to be released from their upcoming album In Our Heads. In Our Heads is the follow-up to 2010's One Life Stand, and will be brought out on June 11. The eight-minute video features a continuously spinning camera while the band perform the track in their studio. Of the album, Hot Chip's Joe Goddard told NME: "It basically sounds like Hot Chip. (more)...

British electro-pop fivesome Hot Chip announced today that it will release its fifth album, In Our Heads, on June 12. Recorded in London, the 11-track LP is the band’s first venture with Domino Records and the follow-up 2010’s richly textured One Life Stand. Hot Chip will spend the summer touring in western Europe, though it has two American shows booked at this point: in July the group will be in Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival, and it will hit the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Sept. 9. More show dates will be announced soon.

Hot Chip have announced the title and release date of their new album. In Our Heads will be released in the UK on June 11 and a day later in the Us. The collective's fifth studio LP was recorded and self-produced in London. The opus marks their first with new record label Domino. The album is described in a press release as "an unadulterated delight... bursting with dynamic floor fillers, euphoric earworms and verbose synth-fuelled love songs". In Our Heads follows up 2010's One Life Stand, which peaked at number 11 on the charts. Band member Joe Goddard recently released Be Strong under the guise The 2 Bears, a collaborative record with producer Raf Rundell.

Hot Chip were recently confirmed for (more)...

Last night's Gossip Girl music selections were terrific as always. In order to update our library as much as possible, we need your help to complete our list of the songs from Monday.

Leave a comment with other music from "The Undergraduates" we can add:

New Young Pony Club - "Oh Cherie" The Black Keys - "Tighten Up" Hot Chip - "Keep Quiet" Hot Chip - "One Life Stand"...

There's a double helping of the Dane, Wall Street returns, Wallace and Gromit take up presenting – and Robyn goes for broke. Our critics pick this autumn's hottest shows

Theatre

Hamlet

Prepare for the latest battle of the princes. John Simm is first in the field at the Sheffield Crucible; then Rory Kinnear enters the running in a Nicholas Hytner production for the National Theatre. It's not, of course, a contest – but comparisons will be inevitable. Crucible, Sheffield (0114-249 6000), from 16 September; and Olivier, London SE1 (020-7452 3000), from 7 October.

The Thrill of it All

Forced Entertainment continues the British experimental tradition with an evening of vaudevillian capers, Japanese lounge music and tarnished sequins. Nuffield, Lancaster (01524 594151), 12-13 October. Then touring.

Tribes

Nina Raine follows her impressive debut play, Rabbits, with a drama about an unconventional family that has its own private language and rules. At its centre is Billy, who is deaf and...

Hot Chip's Al Doyle has admitted that he has been interested by the response to the group's last album One Life Stand. The guitarist told The Quietus that he had predicted that some fans would take a longer time to get into the record than the band's previous work. Doyle said: "It's been interesting to see the response to the record. There was a bunch of people who liked it straight away and a lot of people who really hated it. "And then following those responses it's been a case of people giving listening to it and giving it a bit more of a chance and then coming round (more)...

A music video from electropop band Hot Chip to support their single "I Feel Better" has made its way out. It features four boybanders dancing and lip-syncing the song's verses before a shave-headed man takes the stage and shoots them with lasers coming out of his eyes.

The video is directed by actor Peter Serafinowicz who voices Darth Maul in 1999 movie "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace". The band's members are also included in this video. Instead of given the spotlight, they are spotted among the cheering crowd.

"I Feel Better" appears among new songs listed in the band's fourth studio album "One Life Stand" which peaked at No. 11 on the U.K. albums chart and reached No. 1 on Billboard Top Heatseekers list. The song was released as a follow-up to the album's title track.

Hot Chip's "I Feel Better" music video...

Singer's first album since 2000 leads next week's albums chart, followed by Lady Antebellum and Jaheim.

By Gil Kaufman

Sade's <i>Soldier Of Love</i>

Photo: Epic

Apparently, it doesn't matter how long Sade stays away, because as soon as she slinks back into our lives, we can't get enough of the enigmatic Helen Folasade Adu, whose last album came out in 2000. The smooth-as-silk singer will easily take the top spot on next week's Billboard 200 charts with her sixth full-length album, Soldier of Love, capitalizing on the Valentine's Day holiday and racking up impressive sales of 502,000, according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan.

That feat was enough to push the previous two-week champ, Lady Antebellum's Need You Now down to #2, as sales slipped a fraction to 208,000. Debuting at #3 is R&B crooner Jaheim, whose Another Round moved 112,000 units, followed by two more new faces in the top 10, country singer Josh Turner with...

Hot Chip One Life Stand (Astralwerks) Back in 2006, Hot Chip’s second full-length album, The Warning, gave bookish guys like me hope. Wow, here’s five unassuming British guys in thrift-shop T-shirts singing songs about unrequited love. In a polarized musical landscape dominated by either lo-fi aesthetics or overzealous autotune, Hot Chip is a refreshing feat of studio wizardry, below-the-waistline beats, and lyrically intimate revelations. The underdog lover’s sentimentality is still intact, too—take, for example the smooth and assiduous first line of the slick track “Alley Cats”: “Two people are alley cats/we had an unhappy cat/he is restless, needs attention, loses patience, seeks affection.” Hot Chip’s sound was already fully packaged before One Life Stand—sugary dance ballads with thumping beats and downbeat love songs with fraught synthesizers. But now, they’ve peeled back all the layers to show their more private side as well.

Hot Chip would make a pretty killer rock band. They just need to work on their set list a bit. Sure, you can play some of the new stuff, but you've also got to sprinkle in the hits. You can totally do an encore, but you've got to have one bombastic number left in the bag. After all, the kids need something to buzz about as they make their way to the exits.

All of that was abundantly clear on Friday night (February 5) at New York's Highline Ballroom, as Hot Chip returned to the stage after a brief hiatus for a MySpace Secret Show in support of their brand-new album One Life Stand. It was a rather excellent rock show, with epic light design, massive backbeats and even the occasional guitar thrown in for good measure, but the guys could probably learn a thing or two about pacing.

Opening with...

Alicia Keys has reached number one with The Element of Freedom. Keys's fourth album, which has been in the charts for eight weeks, climbed up one place to claim the top spot. Corinne Bailey Rae entered at number five with her second album The Sea, while Ke$$ha's debut Animal reached number eight. Meanwhile, Peter Andre's Unconditional Love Songs went straight in at number nine. However, Hot Chip failed to break the top ten with One Life Stand, charting at number eleven, while Justin Bieber dropped eleven places to 19 with My World. Pixie Lott's Turn It Up also fell out of the top ten, slipping to number 17, while last week's number nine, Only Revolutions by Biffy Clyro, moved down to number 14. Meanwhile, Journey, whose hit 'Don't Stop Believin' has been in the (more)...

Joe Goddard has said that Hot Chip are unashamed of writing pop songs. The musician said that the group faced no pressure from their label to write in a certain way on upcoming album One Life Stand. Goddard told Digital Spy: "If you spoke to certain people in the more underground dance community, they might dismiss us for making 'pop music' in the bad sense. "I'm sure there are people that don't like us for that reason. Sometimes I think we should try to do something cooler, a bit more underground and edgy, but at the end of the day we are what we are. We write (more)...

Hot Chip have suggested that they will perform at the Glastonbury Festival this summer. The group, who release fourth studio album One Life Stand on February 1, dropped a hint that they will be on the lineup for the festival's 40th anniversary. "You'll potentially see us in the Somerset area of the UK around the end of June I'd imagine," lead singer Alexis Taylor told BBC Newsbeat. "I have been to that part of the world and enjoyed being there. Nice cider there, good music and good atmosphere." (more)...

Hot Chip have revealed that they were inspired to write a song after seeing Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent. Band member Joe Goddard claimed that he penned the track 'Keep Quiet' immediately after seeing Boyle perform 'I Dreamed A Dream' on the ITV1 show. "I'd never seen it before and I found it quite incredible," he told Billboard. "Just listening to that made me want to write a song. I sent the track to Alexis [Taylor] and he quickly wrote the words and sent it back." Goddard revealed that the group spent too long working on their new album One Life Stand, released on February 8, and had (more)...

Part 3: From Kick-Ass to new digital technology

Kick-ass

Meet the new class of slacker superheroes

Although 2009 was notably free of Super- and Spider-Men, with only the underwhelming Watchmen to fill the gap, 2010 sees the return of the comic-book hero big time, but with a sneaky twist: next year's crop don't have a single superpower between them. First out of the gate is Matthew Vaughn's scabrous Kick-Ass, adapted from Mark Millar's graphic novel, about a teenage boy (played by Aaron Johnson), who dreams of being a masked vigilante and winds up crossing paths with real-life caped crusaders Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz), a ferocious, foul-mouthed father-and-daughter double act. Following that comes Edgar Wright's long-awaited Hot Fuzz follow-up Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, based on a series of comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley and starring Michael Cera as a lovelorn slacker who has to defeat...