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Nelly Furtado adds a little pop to the dreamy sound of British crooner James Morrison on the new track "Broken Strings." The song will appear on Morrison's second album, titled "Songs For You, Truths For Me," which will be released in the U.K. on Monday.

"I'm really happy with the album, there's a song on there with Nelly Furtado which I'm really excited about, it's great," Morrison says in an interview. "I had a track and I wanted a girl singer on it and she was the first person to come to mind. I thought, 'I'll go for it, but she might say no.' I aimed high and she was well up for doing it, so it all worked out good."

It's a slick, radio-ready track that is an accomplished teaming of both. It will surely give Morrison a bit more exposure to pop lovers on both sides of the pond. Most importantly, it is great to hear Furtado while we await more more new material from her. (Click here to pre-order "Broken Strings" on 7Digital.)

The Swedes just have an incredible knack for cranking out slick pop ditties that will have you tapping your feet whether you want it or not. It must be in their water.

Isabel Guzman is no exception to that rule. The emerging Swedish pop diva (who was classmates with Robyn) is ready to take over the dance floor with a brand-new EP, titled "Kill The Boy." The entire project was inspired by comic book stories,  dark city landscapes and most notably the NBC television series Heroes. "The images of a dark deserted city, the future, superpowers and the splash of neon individuals, all dancing; some for therapy and others just because pop runs through their veins," Guzman explains in a press release.

The first single taken of that album is the electro-pop stomper "Mysterious" that will surely get the boys and girls dancing with its punctuating beat and Guzman's lusty vocals.  There's no release date yet for "Kill The Boy." Right now, Guzman has just shared the EP among some friends and a couple of bloggers like me. Time to take it to next level I'd say. (Click here to listen a remix of "Mysterious" by Lilla Bjorn.)

New York City dance kids have known LadyGaga for years. Emerging from the hip & happening downtown club scene, the singer is known for her burlesque pop that combines hot beats, powerful vocals, fierce fashion and her risqué stage show.

Interscope Records is now making a huge push to promote LadyGaGa as the next big pop thing in anticipation of debut album, titled "The Fame," will be released this summer. The first single taken from the album is the dance floor stomper "Just Dance" that you can stream in the player below.

LadyGaga has a simple vision of what she wants to accomplish with her music. "When people listen to my songs I want them to think 'I don't know what party she went to but I wanna go there," she says in a press release. "Why can’t we just have a good time like they did in the disco days?"

ArjanWrites reader David wrote me earlier about his meeting with LadyGaga at Score in South Beach during the Winter Music Conference. "Gotta love a girl who gets arrested for performing in American Apparel hotpants during Lilith Fair," he writes. And that's says it all. (Thanks to David for the heads up.)

Watch LadyGaga Electronic Press Kit to hear the lady herself talk about her new album.

A few weeks ago I got a call from one of my producers Guy Sigsworth saying that he’d nearly finished the project he, and his colleague Andy Page, have been working on for the majority of 2007 - the brand new Alanis Morissette album ‘Flavors of Entanglement’. Guy asked if I would pop over to his studio to have an album playback and share my thoughts. I was really excited, partly because I didn’t really know what to expect.

When ‘Jagged Little Pill’ came out in 1995 I was 14, and it swiftly became one of the most important albums for me alongside Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ and Tori Amos’ ‘Little Earthquakes’. I loved their honesty, their melodies and their strength. Skip forward to Autumn 2006 and I was working with Guy on ‘Winter’s Coming’, the closing song for my debut Temposhark album. Alanis had just approached him to see if he’d be interested in collaborating.

One year on, I arrive at Guy’s studio in West London. He reminds me that by now they’ve produced and co-written well over twenty songs! In this one afternoon I hear 22 songs in total, and as each song went by, it was like falling in love with Alanis all over again.

Four highlights for me were ‘Citizen Of The Planet’ which starts off with intriguing lyrics that twist and turn around a captivating melody before hurtling into one of the best choruses of her career - it’s just MASSIVE and her voice cuts right through you... Another gem called ‘Madness’ is spell binding in its beauty, and actually a really long song at over six minutes if I remember correctly, but unusually it didn’t feel long at all! I could’ve listened to that one over and over again...

‘Straitjacket’ is another powerful track that has stuck in my head, with genius lyrics and great melodic hooks... whilst my favourite of all the songs is called ‘Torch’. It’s just the most touching, almost devastating, dedication to the end of a relationship and the things you miss most about your day-to-day life with a partner.

And it was on hearing ‘Torch’, that I remembered why Alanis is such an important voice. She is so good at channelling her subconscious, those true thoughts most people hide. She can take those deeply private emotions and translate them in a simple, easy-to-relate-to way; putting into words what so many of us feel. This new collection of songs takes you on a serious emotional journey, across many highs and lows, and is possibly her best song writing since ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and 'Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie'. It’s just so easy to connect with – the end of a relationship, the value of childhood friends, complicated family ties and all kinds of emotional ‘entanglements’.

Robert's review of Alanis continues after the jump!

A few weeks ago, I alerted you about new Danish pop trio Private and featured their track "My Private Secret." The song took Denmark by storm and topped the charts in Denmark back in September.

Private is the brainchild of singer and producer Thomas Troelsen from Copenhagen who previously was the lead vocalist in the popular Danish group Superheroes. After releasing three albums and touring around the world, Superheroes disbanded late 2006. Thomas and two other band members have reunited to continue to make music together as Private. The trio is signed to Universal Music and expect their debut to be released early 2008.

The group is now streaming a few new tracks on their MySpace page, including their synthsational new single "Crucify My Heart." The song  has a bit of an urban feel to it and features some serious diva action towards the end. There is something very anomalous about Troelsen's twisting and turning vocals that invokes memories of Scritti Politti and Jermaine Stewart.

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