IS IT A SIN TO WANT TO DANCE?

FRESH from his starring role in It’s A Sin, Olly Alexander (left) returns to music on new Years & Years single Starstruck. Originally inspired by a night of stargazing outside a rural recording studio, the track is an electronic dance number with a 1980s flavour, in keeping with Olly’s appearance in the Channel 4 drama series. ‘Since we had to stop, all I’ve wanted to do is go out and dance,’ he says. A new album is due this year. Van Morrison’s latest is also a taster for a forthcoming LP: the wryly titled Latest Record Project: Volume 1. Frustrated at being unable to tour, Van has spent the past year writing on piano, guitar and woodwind, and new single Only A Song is a sax-powered blues workout with a rolling groove.

It’s now five years since Prince’s death, but the seemingly bottomless Paisley Park vault continues to yield fresh riches. The latest is the title track from an unreleased 2010 album, Welcome 2 America.

Set to a 1970s funk groove, the rapped soliloquy sees The Purple One addressing the ills of celebrity culture and social media. The album follows in July.

The White Stripes have also been raiding the archives. Twenty years on from the game-changing White Blood Cells — the album that launched a garage-rock boom — the Detroit duo have released a raw version of the classic Fell In Love With A Girl.