To spare you the potentially wasted minutes and near-certain embarrassment of acquiring crappy music, let’s put on our driving goggles, take a ride down the information superhighway and listen to some free music. Here’s what you should know about this week’s free songs from iTunes:

“Let it Go”
Fossil Collective

There is no such thing as too much praise for this song. Beautiful, just-present-enough vocal harmonies, exquisite melodies, warm and clear acoustic guitar underpinnings and lyrics that are pretty without being obscure all contribute to the strongest free song iTunes has offered in a long time. Members of Fossil Collective are very good at what they do, and what they do is make outstanding acoustic folk music. Although their sound is definitely of a Brit-folk flavor, these men from across the pond show a solid understanding of Americana roots as well.

Bottom line: if you like anything even remotely resembling folk, or even if you don’t, download this song.

“Primadonna”
Marina and the Diamonds

This second free offering is not just a song but a music video. Unfortunately, the visuals don’t add anything to the experience, and in fact make one realize even quicker what a piece of commercial trash this song is trying to be. The video combines vignette lighting with retro analogue screen filtering, while the singer lounges around suggestively in her best Marilyn Monroe costume. There’s a derelict mansion and a vintage exercise bike. The viewer is left with no conclusion to make except that Marina and the Diamonds are actively pandering to the hipster sensibility with their trying-so-hard-to-look-like-they’re-not-trying-hard music video that is just replete with stereotypical aesthetics and elements. The song itself is similarly inane: barely-concealed auto-tune gives the vocals that boring, too-perfect polish, which is almost saved by the singer’s interesting but too often suppressed Welsh accent. The lyrics exalt (perhaps ironically) the materialism and sense of entitlement of the titular prima donna, which combines with the uninspiring lip-syncing video to instill the unshakable belief that these people want to be pop stars really badly. The vocal melody is a fairly typical ’90s-pop affair, while the music under it alternates between forgettable keyboard lines and pseudo-dubstep swells.

Bottom line: don’t even waste your time on this one. Please. You will never get those three minutes and 48 seconds of your life back.