"You Don't Know" begins with a guitar that plays as if it were afraid of waking someone. Jacob's Cry sets the instrument down in the middle of the room and lets it breathe, and for the first thirty seconds nothing else is asked of it. The restraint is the first sign that this is a singer who understands how much weight a quiet note can carry.

Anyone who has found an old snapshot at the bottom of a drawer knows the small lurch that follows: the haircut, the squint, the stranger wearing your face. Most songwriters treat that moment as a postcard. Fanny Alexandra, the Swiss independent artist whose new single released on 9 October, treats it as a summons. "Girl in the Photograph" is a conversation across the years, conducted in the dark, with nobody sure at the outset who owes whom an apology.

Pop music has always been a form of weather. Some songs arrive as drizzle, some as thunder, and a precious few as the particular amber light of a late October evening, when the streetlamps flicker on and everything seems briefly, absurdly possible. "All The Time", the new single from Disco Dreams, belongs firmly to that last category. It is a lovely thing: unhurried, glowing and quietly sure of itself.

Twelve months is a short time to follow a debut with a second album, and a shorter one still to make it better. The Crystal Teardrop have done both. *The Crystal Teardrop Is Forming* arrived last May as a handsome calling card for a band steeped in jangle and Paisley Underground fuzz. *Love You More* is the sound of that band after a year of motorway miles, sweaty stages and nightly proof that the thing works.