Many shades of music in our new-releases bin

Our New Music selections this week range from the delicacy of British singer-songwriter Laura Marling to the industrial-strength rock of Muse, with various shades in between.

We dip again into Laura Marling's latest release, Semper Femina, to highlight a track called "Nothing, Not Nearly." It's quite a beautiful number, with lyrics on the theme of treasuring love while it lasts. "We've not got long you know / To bask in the afterglow / Once it's gone, it's gone."

The lyrics are more obscure in "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness," the latest song from The National. No surprise there, and these are hardly the strangest lines we've heard from Matt Berninger. But as he says in the refrain, "I can't explain it any other way." The track has an urgent propulsion suggesting there may be danger in that darkness.

Likewise there's a sense of darkness and danger in "Dig Down," a new single from Muse. But the meaning is clear when Matt Belamy sings, "When God decides to look the other way / And a clown takes the throne / We must find a way." He has described the song as an effort "to counteract the current negativity in the world and give inspiration, optimism and hope to people to fight for the causes they believe in." The official video evokes Blade Runner, 1984 - and Max Headroom!

A much brighter sound comes from Mondo Cozmo, whose new single "Automatic" brings us back to the theme of holding onto love. "If it's love / I won't let go / Till you say so," Joshua Ostrander sings in this very-high-energy track. We never got on board with the Cozmo's previous single, "Shine," but this one grabbed us and, it seems, won't let go.

Also this week we're catching up with Flagship, an indie band from North Carolina. The duo of Drake Margolnick and Michael Finster recently released its second album, The Electric Man, and we're adding the single "Mexican Jackpot" to our New Music bin. The song doesn't seem to have anything to do with either the country or the prize - but hey, the video does feature a piñata. Flagship is embarking on a tour this summer that will hit more than two dozen cities in the USA and Canada.