Every week, Poptart contributor Zhan lists and rants about his five noteworthy eargasms.

1. Yacht – Utopia/Dsytopia
The thing about synth pop is that it tends to be very hit or miss. If done well, the tunes will easily make your day, but if the production is just too slightly over the top, you will quickly dismiss it as yet another overhyped buzzband.

Yacht, though, puts Utopia/Dsytopia very well together. The strange synth work strikes a perfect balance with the more conventional guitar bits. The songs develop in such a way that with every listen, you will hear a new layer in the production you never noticed before.

And that’s definitely a mark of a gem in my book.

2. Bon Iver & James Blake – Fall Creek Boys Choir
The entire blogosphere effectively wet themselves in anticipation when it was announced that “grizzled indie guy who went to the woods to nurse a heartbreak and write pensive songs” Bon Iver and “ that UK electronic new prince of dubstep kid with the weird album cover” James Blake were working together on a track. And here you have it, Fall Creek Boys Choir.

Um. I don’t mind the stuff Bon Iver and James Blake produce individually, but I’m not sure whether if I’m just suffering from a case of backlash against the massive hype, or if Fall Creek Boys Choir, to put it very nicely, is just way too ahead of its time. Way. Tooooooo. Ahead.

I could mention something about the hoots, which supposedly aren’t really supposed to be owls but some kind of African drum, or the jarring over auto-tuned vocals, which while are signatures of both Blake and Iver, seems a bit too much here, or the wtfbbq lyrics (“I will be love befallen/ I’ll lay my teeth I’ll wait for growing”), but I’m just going to say this seems too much of a novelty tune to me. Once you ‘get’ the gimmicks, there’s really nothing much left to justify a second listen.

3. Tahiti 80 – Easy
You can’t go wrong with a snappy indie pop tune and a cool video now can you?

I particularly like the way the band allows the different elements of the song to just breathe, carefully never letting any of the many instruments overpower and spoil the overall vibe that just seems to jaunt along nicely. Even the backing ‘woo-oohs’, usually suspect in any kind of song, complement the lead vocals well and never make themselves unwelcome.

This one’s a grower.

4. Envelopes – I’d Like To CU
Since this is going to be a regular thing, from time to time I’m going to nudge in a gem of a tune that I have picked up across the years.

I discovered Envelopes while on a random browse a few years ago among the aisles of HMV, and was pleasantly surprised when I popped this CD into the testing player. A mixture of brash and playful Pixies-like indie pop that was just so fun to listen to made me addicted to the rush of Envelopes for the ensuing few weeks, and even now from time to time I’ll put this song whenever I’m feeling a need for an instant pick me up.

Naturally, I found out the Envelopes were from Sweden. That weird place all the way up North that while despite having some days where the sun doesn’t rise at all, seem to produce happy indie pop of a quality (and quantity) that the rest of the world simply can’t quite often match.

5) The C90s – Shine A Light (Flight Facilities Remix)
Sometimes, if you are early enough, you can hear the Poptart DJs drop nu-disco tracks like this before they plunge into the Poptart crowd favourites later in the night. Often too, in his opening sets for the international headliners, Zouk’s DJ Hong will spin a nu-disco set which I find very enjoyable.

Anyway just put this song on, kick back and close your eyes. I guarantee a quiet smile on your lips or your money back. Something about the way the subtle chimes tingle at the edges of the chorus, to the way the vocals just simply washes over you, to the horn section that comes in at about the 3.30 mark, come together to form a song of pure, simple catchy bliss.