Pitchfork

Kleerup's "With Every Heartbeat"-- featuring a dazzling vocal from Pitchfork's Swedish pop princess of choice, Robyn-- is a damn fine tune, and had it surfaced earlier in 2006, it very well may have landed higher than #57 on our top tracks of the year list. Hell, it may have even trumped the other Robyn guest spot on the list, Christian Falk's "Dream On", which scored big at #10. I guess we'll never know.

We do know, however, that it's a crying shame about the video. The Fredrik Skogkvist-directed clip follows a mustachioed hipster type in a Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt (aka Andreas Kleerup) around the gritty streets and trams of some urban environs, all hand-held jitters and navel-gazing via camcorder lens. It's not unlike a (mostly) daytime companion piece to David Holmes' "Don't Die Just Yet"-- except that where Holmes served up a moody, grounded instrumental, Kleerup and Robyn are reaching for the stars with "With Every Heartbeat", or at least the luster of the disco lights. In the bland light of day, however, everything feels frustratingly dulled.



Low budget, sure, but you can do a lot more with a little-- and especially with a song that's priceless.