This is a funny part of the year - Big Brother has collapsed in on itself for another year and X Factor is still doing the bit where they show all the scary nutter singers. So what's left to bet on, that's what you want to know.

Well, Love Island obviously – but we won't be covering that because it makes us want to stab ourselves in the mouth with a kitchen knife, and the same goes for How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria, too. That leaves just one option – The Mercury Music Prize. At the start of next month, the Mercury Music Prize will be awarded to the best album of the last year. That's in theory, at least – in reality the Mercury Music Prize shortlist is made up of some staggeringly obvious choices and a few albums so awful that we're not entirely sure if the Mercury Music Prize panel have actually listened to them all the way through.

Between now and September we'll be pulling apart each album on the Mercury Music Prize shortlist, and that starts today with the Mercury music Prize betting odds for Beloved One by Lou Rhodes…

Lou Rhodes: Beloved One – Every year the Mercury Music Prize has a very obvious outsider chosen by the panel to prove how very much cooler than you they are, and this is the case with Beloved One by Lou Rhodes. There's a sliver of a chance that you'll remember Lou Rhodes as being one half of Lamb – one of the smuggest-ever trip hop outfits from a few years ago that seemed to exist only to soundtrack Channel 4 shows about architecture that were presented by smug little tits in tiny square glasses. But after Lamb died its well-deserved death, Lou Rhodes went all folky. Gone are the electronic swishes that characterised her last band, and in have come gypsy chanting, scrapey fiddles and general Nora-Jonesiness. Is it good? Well, it's kind of cosy and warm, we suppose. Will it win the Mercury Music Prize? Not a chance, although as Mercury Music Prize outsiders go, Beloved One by Lou Rhodes is certainly preferable to Polar Bear, last year's Mercury Music Prize Outsiders. They actually managed to make our brains bleed a bit. Current Mercury Music Prize betting odds – 33/1 

Tomorrow – Zoe Rahman's Mercury Music Prize betting odds.

Now buy Beloved One by Lou Rhodes from Amazon for just £8.99 

[story by Stuart Heritage]