Funny how some musicians come to be associated with particular instruments. With Jimmy Page it was the double-necked Gibson. With Rolf Harris it was the, er, wobble-board.

Rising star Little Boots, meanwhile, is rarely seen without her Tenori-On, an obscure electronic instrument that works by sort of pushing LEDs while rotating and… OK, I have no idea how it works, but it looks undeniably cool.

You can see the gadget in action in this clip of Little Boots (who recently topped BBC's Sound Of 2009 poll) playing 'Stuck On Repeat' for 6 Music.

Head to www.bbc.co.uk/6music for more Little Boots live action. You'll also find footage of another Sound Of 2009 band, White Lies.

The only thing more depressing than the news that classic crime drama 'Minder' is to be revived with Shane Richie in the Arthur Daley role, is the revelation that the theme tune is to be re-recorded by Glaswegian Teenage Fanclub clones Attic Lights.

For a start it's a waste of time, since The Bluetones did a perfectly good version back in 1999. More to the point, the history of bands tackling TV theme tunes is hardly a noble one.

When MC Hammer parlayed the 'Addams Family' theme into 'Addams Groove' in 1991, his big-trousered, sub-Bobby Brown clowning wasn't so much creepy and kooky as just plain shonky.

Similarly, Emerson Lake & Palmer's flabby, gelatinous remoulding of the 'Peter Gunn' theme - performed live with drummer Carl Palmer backed by two gargantuan gongs – demonstrates more eloquently than any Sex Pistols song why prog rock had to die.

Some theme tunes inspire a nerdish devotion that's entirely out of step with the actual merit of the song. Who knew, for example, that the 'Spiderman' theme had been covered by The Ramones, The Distillers and Aerosmith?

Similarly, it's difficult to know what drove bands as technically accomplished as The Who and The Jam to reproduce the 'Batman' theme, which essentially involves bellowing one word repeatedly, like a berk, accompanied by a brainless three-note guitar riff. It's hardly 'Going Underground'.

Other artists have tackled the same tune with more imagination. Witness Flaming Lips' frazzled, edge-of-collapse version. Or Snoop Dogg's radical overhaul, in which Batman is re-imagined as a low-ridin', blunt-smokin' vigilante who'll "get wicked on your case" - although one suspects this ultra-laid back Caped Crusader might have had too much gin'n'juice to be much use fighting crime.

Are there any truly great TV theme covers? Well, Green Day's gallop through 'The Simpsons' theme has a certain ramshackle charm, and Manic Street Preachers' take on 'Suicide Is Painless' (the theme from 'MASH') has the honour of being one of the bleakest songs ever to reach Number 7 in the UK charts – even if they ruin it by going all Bon Jovi at the end.

For me, though (and I'm not even sure if this counts as a cover, it's really more of a sample), the most creative use of a TV theme is The Timelords' (aka KLF) 1988 novelty Number One hit 'Doctorin' The Tardis'.

Channeling Gary Glitter, Sweet's 'Blockbuster!' and Harry Enfield's 'Loadsamoney' character (as well as the 'Doctor Who' theme), it's an unashamedly cheesy, yet boundlessly affectionate, love note to '70s/'80s popular culture.

Bill Drummond, who co-wrote the song, called it "the most nauseating record in the world" – and then promptly wrote 'The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way)', explaining how laughably easy it was to write a pop smash. Oh, for a touch of that post-modern playfulness in today's arid pop landscape.

Ever since The Beatles decided to "let Ringo have a bash", the prospect of drummers taking centre-stage has rarely been an enticing one.

However, the first commandment of rock – sticksmen shall never sing – has been eroded of late. First Razorlight's Andy Borrows released a solo album that, miraculously, wasn't an embarrassment for all concerned.

And now it turns out that Radiohead's Phil Selway is an accomplished singer-songwriter, possessed of a placid, Nick Drake-esque singing voice.

Presumably the fuzzy Youtube footage below represents the first fruits from the forthcoming '7 Worlds Collide' album, which is due for release in 2009, with proceeds going to Oxfam.

The loose collective, spearheaded by Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Johnny Marr, among others, were last active in 2001- but some of them, including Selway and Jeff Tweedy, got together for a live in show in Auckland recently, which is where this footage comes from.

If last year's 'Working On A Dream' suggested Bruce Springsteen's forthcoming album of the same name might find him in rather bland, upbeat mood, newie 'Life Itself' comes as a relief, since it's full of the bleak, flinty imagery that true Bruce fans (or at least the ones who love 'Nebraska' and 'The River') get off on.

A brooding, love-as-consolation fable that begins, "We met down in the valley where the water of love and destruction flows", the song inhabits the same shadowy landscape as 'Reason To Believe' and 'Stolen Car', a place where ordinary Joes stand grim and resolute in the face of implacable fate – a notion backed up by the video, which is full of lingering close-ups of said ordinary Joes, interspersed with shots of Bruce doing that pained 'in the studio' look.

The tune itself is a bit 'meh', but that's no great shame because you can download the song for free from Amazon.

In a recent NME interview Rhys Darby, who plays band manager Murray in 'Flight Of The Conchords', promised more of the "same old shit" in season two of the HBO comedy show. Which, frankly, suits us just fine. If it ain't broke etc.

The second batch of twelve episodes kicks off in America on January 18 - and you can watch the first episode in full below. It's actually an old plot, dating back to the show's early BBC radio incarnation - although there's a clear continuity with the end of season one, with Bret and Jemaine's fortunes still in pitiful contrast to those of splinter group The Crazy Dogggz.

There's also a good bit where the duo dress up as tubes of toothpaste to serenade a girl in mock folk-balladeer style. Like we say, it's more of the same. But we're not complaining.

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From Jay-Z doing 'Wonderwall' at Glastonbury to Alexandra Burke reviving interest in Jeff Buckley's version of 'Hallelujah', cover versions helped shape the music zeitgeist in 2008.

Here's our pick of the most imaginative reinventions. Which others would you nominate?

10. Bat For Lashes – A Forest
True to form, Natasha Khan amplified the sinister, nocturnal qualities of the Cure original.
[Download MP3]

9. Scarlett Johansson – Falling Down
The woozily beautiful centrepiece of her shoegazey album of Tom Waits covers.

8. Hot Chip – Nothing Compares 2 U
Aired at Glasto, this was one of the crowd-uniting festival moments of the summer.

7. Cat Power – Dark End Of The Street
Her smoky take on the James Carr standard stayed just the right side of Commitments-style karaoke soul.
[Download MP3]

6. Florence And The Machine – You Got The Love
The recorded version, available on the B-side of 'Dog Days', might have sounded weedy, but live Florence's vocal was a revelation.
[Download MP3]

5. Lykke Li - Knocked Up
More a remix than a cover in the sense that Caleb's original vocals appear alongside Lykke's, the Swede rebuilt the song as a Crystal Castles-style synth-dirge. If you saw her live over the summer you'll know she does a punchily percussive version of Vampire Weekend's 'Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa' too.
[Download MP3]

4. Radiohead – Ceremony
Amps cranked up in a tiny studio, you could tell Radiohead enjoyed tackling this song immensely (though interestingly it seems to be the original Ian Curtis-fronted live version, rather than the New Order studio version, that Thom Yorke is imitating). Their cover of Portishead's 'The Rip' wasn't bad either.

3. Ladyhawke - Womanizer
Lily Allen also had a bash at the Britney Spears' bilabial stutter-rap hit, but Pip Brown's version was infinitely more imaginative, introducing an element of PJ Harvey-style noir-folk drama via cello and saw.

2. Bruce Springsteen – Dream Baby Dream
He's been doing this Suicide cover live for years but he finally got round to releasing it this year. An extraordinary, ever-building epic.
[Download MP3]

1. Vampire Weekend - Everywhere
During the band's October UK tour the chorus of "ooh-aah" became an even bigger crowd-response moment than "Blake's got a new face!". Like all the best reinventions, Vampire Weekend made the track effortlessly their own, investing it with their jaunty Afrobeat-isms without eclipsing the heartmelting sweetness of Christine McVie's lyric.
[Download MP3]