Swedish pop icons The Cardigans release their long-awaited 'Best Of' collection. Tracks like 'Lovefool', 'My Favourite Game' and 'Carnival' sound as fresh as ever. Catchy guitar riffs and an overall great standard of musicianship combine with Nina Persson's vocals to create the truly trademark sound that has won them so many fans since their formation in 1993.

Perhaps best known in America for providing the soundtrack to the opening credits of THE SOPRANOS, Alabama 3 have been churning out their strange hybrid of canned Americana mashed with contemporary dance for over a decade. HITS AND EXIT WOUNDS is their first retrospective, and it succeeds in providing a concise and inclusive collection of their output, as well as being a fitting introduction to the band. Brits masquerading as simple Southern folk is nothing new, but the tenuous marriage of style they exploit in different ways in their songs is novel. Ultimately, most of the tracks avoid kitsch in either their inventive production or the odd inclusion of leftist and/or Situationist rhetoric.