David Smyth discusses Juno, the Oscar-nominated comedy that has a soundtrack that deserves an award itself.

JUNO'S RIGHT ON SONG

Teen pregnancy comedy Juno is regarded as the wild card in this week's Oscar nominations - it has picked up four nods despite being a low-budget indie flick. If only it had been eligible, it really ought to have been handed a fifth for its marvellous soundtrack.

The academy has inexplicably given three of the five nominations for Best Song to Disney's Enchanted. Meanwhile, Juno, the real soundtrack of the year, is currently sitting at a remarkable number three in the US charts. This is some achievement given that the majority of its songs have been penned by Kimya Dawson, an obscure "anti-folk" singer based in Washington State who is best known as one half of long defunct lo-fi jokers the Moldy Peaches.

Juno has fallen foul of the Oscars rule about using "pre-existing" music as opposed to songs written specifically for the film (as has Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood with his fine score for There Will be Blood).

That doesn't mean it isn't everything a great soundtrack should be. It is not graced by the usual tedious sub-classical orchestral meanderings, or a big rock hit that has nothing whatsoever to do with the film it accompanies. Instead, it collects together quiet, quirky, mainly acoustic tunes with teenage themes that perfectly mirror the unglamorous world in which the movie's smart-mouthed heroine resides.

There's Buddy Holly singing his impeccably sweet Dearest, the Velvet Underground's uncharacteristic novelty I'm Sticking With You, and art rockers Sonic Youth covering Superstar by the Carpenters. But it's Dawson who dominates.

The songs include Tire Swing, on which rosy childhood reminiscences are accompanied by acoustic guitar, piano and whistling; house party tale Loose Lips ("We won't stop until somebody calls the cops/And even then we'll start again/And just pretend that nothing ever happened"); and the charming Moldy Peaches love song Anyone Else But You, first released in 2001 and finally set to become a hit.

Allowing one musician to have the lion's share of the songs gives a unity to the soundtrack that reflects the character of the film far more effectively - as British audiences will find out when Juno is released here on 8 February. If the director chooses the right personality, it can work brilliantly, and it's happening more and more.

Elliott Smith kicked off the trend in 1998 with his songs for Good Will Hunting, and another pregnancy-themed hit movie, last year's Knocked Up, was loaded with specially composed songs by Loudon Wainwright III. The recent Steve Carrell comedy, Dan in Real Life, also featured music almost entirely written by Norwegian singersongwriter Sondre Lerche. In Britain, the best soundtrack in this vein was Badly Drawn Boy's 2002 collection for About a Boy.

Given Juno's absence, I'm rooting for Once for an Oscar win, an Irish love story starring, and featuring songs written by, Glen Hansard of the Frames. His ballad Falling Slowly, nominated for Best Song, is the best hope of halting Disney's tedious dominance of a category that doesn't represent the real power of music in the movies.

• Juno the soundtrack is released by Warner on Monday.

VAMPIRES BITE INTO THE WORLD

Sitting in the lobby of a Shepherd's Bush hotel with their chunky knit sweaters and tidy haircuts, the members of Vampire Weekend look as though they should be haw-hawing along the riverside at Henley Regatta, not taking questions on why they're the hottest band in New York right now.

Maybe not as cool as fellow NYC posh lads the Strokes, they're far cleverer. Having formed as students at Columbia University two years ago, now they write songs about architectural detailing (Mansard Roof) and minor grammatical issues (Oxford Comma). They also pack their tracks with baroque strings, exotic rhythms and snaking African Highlife guitars, and are catchier than the norovirus.

Clear comparisons include elder smarties Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads (inevitably, David Byrne is a vocal fan) but Vampire Weekend are more interested in their source material than Simon's Graceland or Talking Heads' Fear of Music. "Those weren't the records that inspired us to make our album," says singer and guitarist Ezra Koenig of their self-titled debut, released by XL on Monday. "We were listening to compilations like The Indestructible Beat of Soweto and West African Gold."

However, they recognise that, like Simon, they are destined to sell far more albums than their source material simply by virtue of being American. "It's sad that music that's not in English has a much smaller chance of being listened to, and ends up in this vague 'World Music' section in stores. It creates a barrier to a lot of great stuff."

At least more young bands are looking beyond the conventional canon for inspiration, with Oxford hot tips Foals boasting afrobeat influences and other New Yorkers such as Dirty Projectors and Yeasayer also filching what Koenig calls "that clean guitar sound". "We just try to keep our ears open," he says. The music world is a good deal more interesting as a result.

NEW ON THE NET

• As anticipation builds for the May arrival of Prospekt, Coldplay's fourth album and certainly one of the biggest of the year, the band can be found at www.coldplay.com reminiscing about this month's 1.th anniversary of their first gig. They recall being paid &40 to play the Laurel Tree in Camden where, rather unpromisingly, they called themselves Starfish and had a song called Ode to Deodorant. Interestingly, a photo of Chris Martin shows he had already adopted his habit of scribbling all over his hand.

• Janet Jackson returns next month with a new album, Discipline, on a new record label, Island, and a new image as a sexy robot. A couple of decent remixes of first single Feedback have already leaked out - a lengthy house workout by Jeremy Word and something rather weirder by Timbaland. Have a listen at http://thebeebblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-janet-jacksonfeedbackjeremy-word.html.

• As if MySpace and Facebook aren't timeconsuming enough, networking site Bebo is offering free music as a carrot if you give their services a go. Get downloads from their Free Single Saturday promotion at http://bebo.com/ itunesuk, which tomorrow will have a track by rapidly up-and-coming boy-girl duo The Ting Tings.