Friday's French music break - Margaux Avril, "Murder on the dance floor"

Friday's French music break this week is from the appropriately named (given the month) 22-year-old Parisian singer Margaux Avril (French for "April" of course) - "Murder on the dance floor".

Margaux Avril (screenshot from "L'air du rien")

Yes it's a song with which you're probably familiar - originally released in 2001 by the British singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor who co-wrote it, and for whom it was a major international hit with an unforgettable and wonderfully naughty and hammed-up video to accompany it.

Need a reminder?

Here it is.

Avril's acoustic version of a song Ellis-Bextor recorded when she was also 22 years old doesn't have the same dance feel to it of course, but the groove remains.

And Avril's voice has that grain of roughness and quality of sound that's maybe missing from her first single currently delighting radio listeners across the country, "L'air de rien".

That's a charming pop number successfully designed to stick in your head (regardless) and which might make you think initially you're listening to a more sugary version of the Canadian singer Cœur de pirate (Béatrice Martin) - but without all those tattoos of course.

Margaux Avril (screenshot from "L'air du rien")

All right, Avril might not be "The Voice" - that's being left to TV viewers to decide in the second series currently airing on TF1.

But she can most definitely sing (and sing well) and has been signed to the French record label AZ - an affiliate of Universal - which should guarantee that she'll at least be able to carve out a reasonable career for herself - if not something more than that.

Some of the acoustic cover versions available on her official site prove she add her own personal touch to songs that have very different musical backgrounds and, more importantly perhaps, that she has a sound other than one "produced" in the studio.

Take a listen to her rendition of French singer Étienne Daho's 1984 hit "Week-end à Rome" for example. Avril definitely breathes new life into a gaspingly awful electro-pop pap.

Or better still there's her version of the excellent US rock group Kings of Leon's "Sex is on fire"

If you want to find out more about Avril's next single "Lunatique" or when and where she's playing, scoot over to her Facebook page.

And while we await the release of her first album, here she is with that promised acoustic version of "Murder on the dance floor" - this week's Friday's French music break.

Enjoy.