MELISMATIC: HEAR THIS: BLUSH goes 'Electric'; Vanquish goes 'Harder'

First on the docket are two non-US girl groups that have stolen my heart as of late.

My love for Alisha, JiHae, Nacho, Angeli and Victoria of the Pan-Asian girl group BLUSH has been well documented on this blog. The girls already have a handful of dancey hits to their name ("All Stars", "Up Up And Away", "Dance On", this past September's "Miss Out" and my personal favorite "Undivided"), and now we can add another to the list in "Electric". The song landed on iTunes the day before Halloween (aka, the day Sandy hit the East Coast).

"Electric" is more than just a great single to help display a maturing BLUSH, it's a great bridge song connecting BLUSH's two main strengths as a teen pop group -- it's more of a straight ahead pop ditty akin to previous singles like "All Stars" and "Miss Out" which will lend itself to the Radio Disney swing of things but still has traces of their harder dance-floor ready stuff ("Dance On" and "Undivided" which were hits on the Billboard Dance Charts). The song was a fan favorite from live performances despite it remaining unreleased till now -- complete with sexier choreography involving chairs (I feel Britney flashbacks) and metallic corset-esque outfits (I feel Wonder Girls "Like Money" connections). However, despite being called "Electric", it's definitely not as dancey electro as I was expecting -- it's actually pretty mid-tempo.

Next up -- Holly, Rianna, Lizzy and Kayleigh of Vanquish, a superb new girl group from (surprise, surprise) the UK. I can't take total credit for this one, as I first discovered the group thanks to my lovely friend Paul over at FizzyPop, who pointed me in the direction of their super-de-duper, imaginative, unplugged medley mashup of a handful of boy band songs (obviously -- UK girl group that can sing acapella + boy band songs = win for Melismatic) last September. Their medley featured The Wanted's "Chasing the Sun", JLS' "Eyes Wide Shut", Lawson's "Taking Over Me", One Direction's "One Thing" and Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way". So basically, it's awesome.

The group has already opened for the likes of Westlife, STEPS and The Wanted over in the UK and their upcoming debut album is boasting the writing talents of Jorgen Eloffson (Britney, Kelly Clarkson, Agnes, and Girls' Generation amongst so many others) and Wayne Hector (Westlife, The Wanted, JLS, and the most recent Girls Aloud single -- we'll get to that in a second). All signs are pointing to very good things being in store for these ladies.

Their debut single, "The Harder You Love" was released back in May and it's a great corker of a tune in a early The Saturdays-before-they-tried-to-take-themselves-too-serious kind of way. The video also conjures up those kind of nostalgia feels for me.