Every Tuesday, Hypeful teams up with Salad Days Music to pick and preview the week’s best new album releases. Bend an ear to this week’s choicest selections after the jump!

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No jokes, no trainwreck references. I love Pete Doherty and suspect/hope that he’ll be around ’till the very end partying with Wall E, Keith Richards, and cockroaches. Anyhoo, someone snagged a radio rip of “Last of the English Roses,” the first single from his upcoming solo album Grace/Wastelands. NME described the new track, which features Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, as both “Gorrilaz-esque” and a “real curveball.” Yet, I think it sounds pretty much like good ol’ standard Pete. Decide for yourself.

MP3:
Pete Doherty - Last of the English Roses (Radio Rip)
[via Pretty Much Amazing!]

NJ piano-man/singer-songwriter Ian McGlynn deserves serious kudos for his gorgeously sparse take on The National’s “Mistaken For Strangers” (featured on his recent Memorial Day Parade EP). Gone is Matt Berninger’s boozed-out baritone replaced by McGlynn’s gently enunciated falsetto, transforming the darkly sardonic tune into a lovely lullabye for the lonely. Do check it out, along with “Small Town, Big Hearts” (an original tune from McGlynn’s recent LP, This Is The Sound).

MP3:
Ian McGlynn - “Mistaken For Strangers” (The National cover)
The National - “Mistaken For Strangers”

BONUS MP3:
Ian McGlynn - “Small Town, Big Hearts”

Desperate for a fresh fix of Sufjan (that isn’t Xmas-related)? Soof has contributed an epic cover of Castanets‘ “You Are The Blood” to the HIV/AIDS charity compilation Dark Was The Night. Clocking in at over 10 minutes, the track makes up for Soof’s new album drought and concurrently encapsulates everything you’ve missed about him. It may technically be a cover, but “Blood” packs the clever orchestration of Illinois, the folksy underbelly of Seven Swans, the dissonant electro of Enjoy Your Rabbit, and the rockin’ brass of A Sun Came.

MP3s:
Sufjan Stevens - “You Are The Blood”
Castanets - “You Are The Blood”

While The Decemberists’ “The Rake’s Song” may be the greatest song ever written about filicide, it’s certainly not a topic that induces most people to move their feet. Yet, leave it to Ruby Isle, the self-described Party Band of the Apocalypse, to spin the cautionary tale of child murders into both a highly danceable electro-pop tune and a music video featuring a neon pink gorilla running through a blizzard.

MP3:
Ruby Isle - “The Rake’s Song” (The Decemberists cover)

VIDEO: