Album

The cocks may no longer be in socks but the Peppers remain hyperactive kings of white-boy funk, smack survivors turned mainstream mavericks. Their blend of infantile exuberance and brooding disdain shines in these videos. There's a Busby Berkeley routine for sleazeballs ("Aeroplane"), the definitive punk-junk ballad ("Under The Bridge") and the blood-drenched "Scar Tissue". MTV regulars don't come any more cavalier, or charismatic.

The pick of two near-simultaneous EP releases from the 22-year-old Swede, the four-track Maple Leaves is little short of astounding. While its counterpart, the Rocky Dennis EP, is all soft light and strings, this one swings moods with abandon. A droll miserablist of Smiths vintage, Lekman intones like a baroque Stephin Merritt on the Left Banke-filching "Black Cab": "Oh no Goddamn/I missed the last tram/I killed the party again/Goddamn Goddamn".

Gorgeous digital etherealism from Vienna

Second best-of for alt.rockers

Those infamous phone calls to the world's looniest fan

Run-DMC did more than anyone to bring rock into hip hop in the mid-'80s. Greatest Hits shows the band at their best (the Tipper Gore-baiting "Mary Mary") and worst (the cutesy "Christmas In Hollis"). The purists sneered at the Jason Nevins makeover of "It's Like That",but those warehouse visuals will have turned a new generation of suburban 13-year-olds on to hip hop.

Hallucinatory, spectral folk debut from NY sisters Sierra and Bianca Cassidy

The return of the widow Gainsbourg, with friends

Flawed, fascinating psych-folk curio

Filmed in 1979, directed by sitcom stalwarts lan La Frenais and Dick Clement, To Russia With Elton is the antidote to the current Elton live show. Accompanied only by drummer Ray Cooper, he seems to have a genuine hunger; unsurprising, perhaps, in light of the commercial failure of '78's A Single Man and the following year's critically reviled Victim Of Love. Probably the last time Elton was ever vital.