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Here, then, is a scale of Yourself-Do-It-iveness, starting with the absolute minimum of things you need in order to get your musical ideas out to The Kids, and ending with some more polished (and more expensive) examples.. Some of the latter examples are clearly quite high-budget, but they all share a common goal, to make the business of creating music part of the art of creating music.

Little Boots - 'Meddle'

The title of this song is very apt, given that her video involves her mucking about with several items which are designed to create music in a meddlesome fashion.

The properly recorded single version is , but lacks the full plate-spinning, one-man-band fun, despite being a much 'better' recorded version. Maybe 'Britain's Got Talent' had a point after all...

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Esser - 'Headlock'

Esser, meanwhile, has already graced the pages of ChartBlog, and we have praised his ability to craft pop songs out of himself and some instruments (and nothing else) before. This is why he is level two of DIY-bility.

He also - if you recall - did that video in which he is sick. Do not let this detract from the scuzzy fun of his musical endeavours. Especially when this is not all that far from sounding like something that the new, non-indie Bloc Party might have come up with.

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Stricken City - 'Tak o Tak'

At level three, some evidence of a budget has arrived, and obviously there are more people involved now. But each instrument is being filmed separately, to break up that traditional indie performance video problem. The dressing up really helps too, and it's nice to think that all of the clothes - even the great big pink feather headdress - have come from the singer's own wardrobe. That's very DIY, keeping the stylists at bay.

Ida Maria, you have a rival...

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The Little Ones - 'Ordinary Song'

There are signs of an impressive budget all over this effort, from the polished pop production to the clever video. But look again, what are the band attempting to show us with this? That's right, they're showing us what it's really like to be in a band.

They're drawing a line from the fun of coming up with an idea all together as a band, to the idea taking off, and then them talking about that idea in interviews and so on. It's very clever, and even though they didn't do it themselves in the proper sense, it does show what happens if doing it yourself goes very well, and therefore counts as Level Four in our little count-up.

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City Girls - 'O.M.G.'

I just can't put enough inverted commas around all the words here, so can you either assume that most of the terms used are in finger-quotes or spray your PC screen with ink? That'll really help me a lot. All ready? Here goes!

Hey, we've all seen the Saturdays, right? We are aware of Katy Perry and her work, yes? So we know that sassy girls are making a bit of a comeback, providing a) the song is right and b) what they are singing about is deliberately very very modern, lyrically preposterous, and c) they're not really wearing a right lot.

Enter City Girls and their ode to being totally stalked on the internet. It contains things which real teenagers actually say, right, like LOL and OMG and MySpace and YouTube and stuff, so you can all relate to what it is they're saying, yeah?

And if you're wondering what's so very DIY about this, well, it's more about the word-trick I was talking about at the beginning. Throw in a bunch of authentically modern teen references, and your fans will know that you are talking to them about their lives, and rush to buy your song. That's the theory, anyway.

It's very much the 'home-made soup' of pop lyric writing, and therefore counts as level five.

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*and invent a telepathic bassoon.