Byline: John Sakamoto Toronto star

10. SLOAN

"Follow the Leader"

Don't be fooled by the typically brutal efficiency that characterizes this lead track from the band's 10th album in 20 years. Crammed into the space of a mere three minutes are what sound like bits of four or five songs that magically lock together into an unpredictable whole. It's as though the band decided to take the approach used on side two of The Beatles' Abbey Road and apply it to a single song. (From The Double Cross, out May 10, http://bit.ly/i9WmFQ)

9. RADIOHEAD

"Codex (Mojib Remix)"

Mere hours after the release of Radiohead's previous album, In Rainbows, this Swedish producer hit the Web with a remix of one of the tracks, "Videotape." In the wake of Radiohead's new The King of Limbs, Mojib - a.k.a. Staffan Ulmert - has responded in similarly rapid fashion with this reinterpretation of that album's most downbeat number. The most obvious difference is the addition of a drum track, but rather than settle for a regular, accelerated thump, he's chosen to insert an intermittent beat, while also incorporating subtle bits of guitar, vocals and glockenspiel. The result is, if anything, even more spooky.

(www.mojib.net)

8. THE KICKDRUMS

"Something's Gotta Give

(Audience Remix)"

While the original version of this new single by a production/songwriting duo out of Cleveland sounds as though it was written after listening to Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" a couple of hundred times, this rich, textured overhaul by two Ottawa remixers is considerably harder to pin down, and all the better for it. Forced to veer off the beaten path by a succession of pounded piano chords and the thrum of what...