For myself, and for many others, another essential rite of summer involves picking our summer listening. My personal choice at such a time usually leads me in one of two directions - exuberant guitar pop of the kind you can blast out the car windows as you drive to the beach (you wish) or to Tesco (more likely); or gentle rocksteady reggae, perfect for lounging in the backyard and pretending you're patronising a shoreline in Jamaica (you wish).

First, you must imagine two French guys named Marc and Olivier. They both play lots of different musical instruments and like producing music. They are also men of a certain age - that is, they were young and wide-eyed when punk first came around in 1977, and although their tastes have moved on since, they never quite got over it. Now imagine they have rounded up a small gang of beautiful, disdainful French girls who all happen to be singers. They start jamming bossa nova tracks and they get one singer to sing along to each track.

I can see why you'd say yes... but Nouvelle Vague's self-titled album is something else entirely.

Although we sell a lot of it in the shop, I've never been especially enamoured with bossa nova and latin music in general - it all seems much of a muchness to me. This, I think is part of the genius of the Nouvelle Vague project - that it takes familiar things and reworks them. When I first heard this, it took me much longer than it should have as a good Joy Division fan, to realise that the first track was a cover of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and stop work to listen incredulously. Some might consider it folly - sacrilege even - to record what was such a definitive, excellent song by such a troubled and gifted songwriter, but for some reason it works. It starts with the sound effect of a wave rolling in on the shore and children laughing in the distance, before the gentle finger-picking of an accoustic guitar takes on the beat, accompanied by a gentle shaker beat and then the lazily sliding, indistinctly phrased voice of Eloisia, their first chosen singer. The loungey beat and glockenspeil-ed melody should make it sound cheap and tacky, but somehow it seems like an understated tribute that nods to the original without debasing it.

Track four is a personal highlight for me, originally performed by one of my favourite bands and uncharacteristically written and sung by their bass player rather than either of their usual singer-songwriter-guitarists. Paul Simonon was probably the only white kid in his school in London whilst growing up, and one of the things he later brought with him when he joined all-time punk heroes the Clash was an abiding love of reggae, as well as deeply-rooted loyalties to the black community he came from and a grim understanding of the racial prejudices they faced. Even on their classic album 'London Calling', his track 'Guns of Brixton' is a stand-out moment, ominous and full of inarticulate rage - on 'Nouvelle Vague' it's absolutely electrifying. Its vocals are provided by acclaimed French solo artist Camille, who is sultry and airy one minute, breathily wry the next, lending an air of aching melancholy to the lines "Shot down on the pavement/ Waiting on Death Row" and a nonchalant but steely reserve to "You can crush us/ You can bruise us/ But you'll have to answer to/ Oh, the Guns of Brixton". The understated guitar work and sense of foreboding conjured up when the bass part kicks in after the first chorus are something that still sends shivers up my spine when I hear it, in a way which defies that pedantic logic that claims you can't interpret a song as a singer unless you've experienced it yourself - for I doubt Camille was hanging around the streets of Paris last time there was a race riot going on.

The most noticeable transformation though, in my opinion, occurs on tracks eight and thirteen, both of which are treated in a way that completely opens up a whole new dimension to the original song. XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel" was, in their hands, a hard-driven song, slamming with relentless drum beats, and a little soul-less even though it was still great. Nouvelle Vague make it wistful and gorgeous enough to move you almost to tears; the guitar lilting gently through a melody you always found compelling but never realised was sad, and the reaffirmation that "If young Nigel says he's happy,/ He must be happy" rendered so melancholic that you really feel for the poor guy, whatever it is they're planning for him in his future in British Steel. The closing refrain by the guitar and keyboard is worthy of scoring some heartbreaking lovers' goodbye in a bittersweet teen movie, so poignant does it become in the hands of these multi-instrumentalists.

As a movement and a time for music, punk was vital and exciting and meant massive things to people, and it's still cherished dearly even by those like myself who weren't even born when it first began. New Wave was similarly tied to ideas and culture in a way that meant it permeated people's lives to become more than just the music they listened to, and every track on this album will be laden with a thousand memories to those who are familiar with them. Nouvelle Vague's abiding love of these movements and their careful choice and inspired treatment of their material will not only introduce these songs to a whole new generation, but will make you look back on the tracks you knew and loved in a whole different light.