Who knew Joan Jett’s fist-pumping anthem I Love Rock’n’Roll was a cover version? Not me. And, I’m willing to wager, not most of you.

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This shouldn’t work at all – Johnny Cash singing Barbie Girl thanks to AI – and I bet you think it won’t. Then again you’d probably say the same about the film. Until you’ve heard and seen them.

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La Luz sound as if they should come from somewhere by the sea in sunny SoCal but actually come from rainy Seattle… though they did once record an album in a California surfboard shop, and now live there.

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Wreckless Eric is a national treasure. He would be one even if he’d never made another record after his 1977 masterpiece Whole Wide World. Yet here he is, nearly half a century later, with another simple but striking song that you can’t get out of your head; it arrived in my inbox this morning and now I can’t get it out of mine.

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Bow Wow Wow were formed by Malcolm McLaren from the ashes of Adam & the Ants, with 13-year-old singer Arabella Lu-Win.

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West Texas quartet Holy Wave come from the border town of El Paso and make shimmering, psychedelic dream pop from their current home in Austin.

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This was the song that sent Dave Cousins and his band of former folkies The Strawbs into the pop charts for the first time early in 1973.

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Around the turn of the century I made a musical pilgrimage to the tiny Texas town of Luckenbach, once immortalised in song by Waylon Jennings.

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She might not be a household name but Jean Shepard was a pioneer for women in country music, with a staggering 73 singles in the country chart between 1953 and 1981.

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For some musicians, a tragic death elevates a mediocre career to legendary status. But it didn’t work out that way for Cowboy Copas.

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