Hello there. You look well – have you lost weight? Yes, I am looking a bit bronzed, now you mention it. Why so? Well I recently came back from South Africa: returning to my native land for the first time in two and a half years. It was great. My mum and dad killed a fatted calf. I got to mock the English to a wide and receptive audience. Good times.

I wrote about my time there on the Convoy To Cape Town tour in this week's NME, but space and focus meant the piece was more of an historical account of the evolution of their modern music scene. This, on the other hand, is the bit where I embrace the infinite space the internet brings and bang-on in more detail about the best local bands you could look up on the web.

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By far and away my favourite thing to come out of SA in recent days is actually in England this month: Playdoe – comprising producer Sibot, ex-of the seminal turntablists The Reel Estate Agents, and MC Spoek.

Their freshly released mini-album has clung limpet-like to my CD player over the past few weeks – the production is off the nanging chain, and Spoek has a charming line in cheeky-chappy retro-rap. I'd place him somewhere between Spank Rock and Grandmaster Flash, though there's one track on there that sounds like MC Hammer's seminal Addams Family theme tune.

I'm still not sure whether I prefer the original version of their party-rotisserie 'It's That Beat', or the re-mixed hoover-house version. You can watch the latter below:

My long-term faves are Eat This, Horse - five porcelain-pretty youths from a private school, who sound not unlike a mildly-deranged version of NYC's favourite five porcelain-pretty youths from a private school.

They deny this entirely, and claim to be influenced by Orange Juice and Talking Heads. But then you would, wouldn't you? Check out 'Going Shopping' for a Roxy Music homage you could never feel cheated by. Or 'Nightwatching' for the third-best song The Strokes never wrote.

Right now, they're on semi-hiatus, with rumoured new material that, from their description of its genre-oblivious Moulinex of weird, would seem to sit somewhere near TV On The Radio's new 'un.

Dear John, Love Emma is the new side-project of Alex and John from the band: a brittle, prim alt.folk thing that a lot of people seem to love. Personally it leaves me a bit cold, but YOU DECIDE.

In my youth, I mis-spent a lot of time watching Cape Town's Black India. They seemed to marry the sinister precision of Franz Ferdinand's more oriental moments and pre-shit Placebo with the full-tilt fury of a young band. Reader, they positively rocked. Their bassist split in early 2006, the others fled to London, where they seem to have made a last stand before melting away entirely.

BLKJKS have been beavering away on their own track since the early part of this decade, mixing the Afro-jazz of their township childhoods with mannish 70s rock, but only really achieved a modest level of international cult-dom in the past year-or-so, allowing them to produce their last EP at Electric Ladyland Studios. Fitting, because it sounds a bit like Jimi Hendrix's swampier moments under heavy medication.

The rest? A lot of people seem to love Kidofdoom - an entirely instrumental synth-indie act with an unprecedented following. In the manner of so many local acts, garage-rockers Howard Roark broke up after releasing one good EP. Johnny Neon offer great flashbulb DFA 1979/MSTRKRFT electro. As do Unit R.

New Loud Rockets have got good songs (if you can get past the weight of their trad-indie influences). The Wild Eyes are always an amazing live act: Birthday Party-feral, a genderless Ziggy of a frontman, and Bonzo – whom I refer to in my article – turning up on stage with them occasionally, in clownish drag , intermittently placing an angle-grinder against a strip of metal to shower the first few rows in sparks.

Sadly, the stuff available on their MyspaceFly Paper Jet's jazzy pop is always worth a look-in (see below). As is the downtempo electronica of Pravda 23.

And if you're after coruscating Afrikaans punk, well look no further than Fokofpolisiekar - even if they have gone a bit emo.