By this time next week, we'll all know who the winner of the 2006 Mercury Music Prize is, and there'll have been enough time for a staggeringly bitter backlash against the winners, too.

But as for now, nobody has the first clue who's going to win the Mercury Music Prize and get the official title of The Best Album Of The Last 12 Months. Just like that rubbish album from last year that nobody bought did. Yes, the Mercury Music Prize is that important.

Here are the Mercury Music Prize betting odds for The Warning by Hot Chip…

Hot Chip: The Warning  – It's quite rare for an album to truly defy definition – so far we've looked at Mercury Music Prize contenders that have been firmly folk, jazz, indie-rock and widdly apocalypto-rawk – but that's what The Warning by Hot Chip does; it's such a mish-mash of ideas and styles that we don't know what to label it apart from 'jaw-dropping'. The Warning by Hot Chip concocts a heart-bursting mix of laptop glitchpop, Paul McCartney-esque melodic pop, kindergarten hip-hop, 1980s soulboy funk and just about every other kind of music you've loved at one point or another. The Warning is this year's Thunder Lightning Strike which, as if you needed telling, is a very good thing indeed. Is it good? Good? Good? The Warning by Hot Chip is so perfect that you should run to HMV barefoot right now to buy yourselves a copy. Will it win the Mercury Music Prize? Hard to tell, since The Warning so steadfastly refuses to be pigeonholed, maybe it'll just confuse some of the judges. But, yes, we'd quite like it to. Current Mercury Music Prize betting odds – 12/1

Now buy The Warning by Hot Chip at Amazon

Tomorrow - the Mercury Music Prize betting odds for Ballad Of The Broken Seas by Isobel Cambell & Mark Lanegan

[story by Stuart Heritage]