Album: Rose Elinor Dougall, Without Why (Scarlett Music)

Since leaving the Pipettes, the polka-dotted pop trio of which she was a founding member, Dougall has pursued a musical path which is no less 1960s in origin, but with a completely different flavour.

On Without Why, she eschews sparky girl-group sass for sweepingly romantic indie-folk-pop laced with a permanent undercurrent of melancholia. The mood here is less about Shangri-La's and Ronettes, more Scott Walker and Arthur Lee. It delivers the simplest and most eternal of pleasures: beautiful songs, beautifully sung.