Th' Faith Healers - Love Song

What a great band. Th' Faith Healers combined krautrock and punk in a furious volley of barrelling bass-lines and wonderfully melodic guitar. Their songs are so good because they mostly click into a groove from the first bar and keep it going for ages without letting up. This is a jump-in-the-air, life-affirming kind of love song, and that can't hurt on any playlist.

Click here to download from iTunes

Radiohead - Lozenge Of Love

I don't know what a lozenge of love might be. Would you suck on it? Hmm. Anyway, this dates from around My Iron Lung, which is when Radiohead were turning from indie-rock into this beautiful, literate, alien form of music. I think Thom Yorke was channelling Jeff Buckley at this point but it still sounds otherworldly to me. There's just something fragile and distant about it, like it's been beamed in from somewhere.

Listen to it here

Bloc Party's Gordon serves up a lovin' spoonful of tracks

Cap'n Jazz - Ooh Do I Love You

There's a wealth of American bands that have fed into the history of alt-rock that just get overlooked in the UK. Here, all you to need to listen to is the Who and the Jam and you have all you need to contribute to the canon of British music. Cap'n Jazz come from a completely different tradition, of American punk and hardcore, and their take on the love song is shambolic, strained, articulate but kind of spazzy, and I love that.

Click here to download from iTunes

Vangelis - Love Theme (from Blade Runner)

My wife thinks this is so cheesy - you know, the corny 80s saxophone, so Vangelis. But if you're like me, and you love Blade Runner, you'll know how key this song is to the scene where Deckard seduces Rachel. After a bit of a struggle, he lets her hair down and it goes all soft-focus and erotic. It's the moment you first fall in love with a robot basically, which is a pretty important moment in the life of any young boy...

Click here to download from iTunes

Björk - All is Full of Love

I actually prefer the version on the Greatest Hits as opposed to the one on Homogenic, because it gives the song a beat which makes it soar all the more. Björk has a great way with words, and she is totally right when she sings "you'll be given love ... maybe not from the directions you are staring at". This song is a reclamation of love after feeling hopeless; it's a triumph over heartbreak. It makes you believe in love again.

Click here to download from iTunes

Reynolds - Yunga

This is an instrumental, but I'm sneaking it in because it's on a record called Love Songs which came out a few years ago on the tiny indie Errol Records. I always think of this as being quite monochrome - there's not a huge range to it, but it occupies this vast space, something like a Rothko painting, and it's all the more moving for it. There's just not enough of this kind of music being made: subtle, almost atonal, bleakly beautiful. Less is more sometimes. Bring back Reynolds.

Watch it here

Interpol - NARC

This one has special associations for me. The winter we went on tour with Interpol was just about the time I met my wife and I used to listen to Antics under the covers when we were apart. When it all breaks down and then kicks back in with "you should be in my space, you should be in my life..." I get shivers. Amazing.

Click here to download from iTunes

Sebadoh - Willing To Wait

Lou Barlow is such a charmer! He has a real pithy way with the three-minute love song, and by the end of it you know the whole story: the break-up, the conversation, the make-up. Willing To Wait is the most plaintive song of desperation I can think of - it's about realising you're still in love with someone who's left you for someone else. It's so sad: "I'm willing to wait my turn to be with you", but there is still hope to it. We've all been there. Listen to this song, it eases the pain.

Click here to download from iTunes

Life Without Buildings - Love Trinity

We were always big fans of this band. This song is pretty much the last thing they did before they split up: it's hard to find but worth tracking down. I can't overstate how good this band are, it's near perfect music to my ears - lovely clean guitar and bass, neat drumming. Everything they did was simple, honest, passionate. The lyrics are unique stream-of-consciousness stuff - "Eight by eight by eight, they're my favourite numbers. Are the numbers in love yet?" It makes me happy.

Broken Social Scene - Lover's Spit

An anti-love song in a way. "All these people drinking lover's spit / They just sit around and clean their face with it". It's ugly, but so pretty at the same time. Kevin Drew is a master of the metaphor I guess. It can mean so much - it's like it's eyeing up a whole generation, and yet it's also just about two people, one night.

Click here to download from iTunes

Kelis - I Want Your Love

Big R&B artists have a tendency to depict themselves in a really high-contrast, over-the-top way these days, but I like Kaleidoscope because it's a fairly understated record, considering N*E*R*D are all over it. The message behind this is pretty straightforward but you have to have something sexy and fun on a playlist like this.

Click here to download from iTunes