COLBIE CAILLAT FIRST AMONG MANY

They're certainly not in stores, as retail doldrums continue, with Universal Republic's Colbie Caillat album Breakthrough the top debut, on track for between 95-100k in sales, based on one-day reports from whoever's selling music these days.

Atlantic Christian rock band Skillet is the week's big surprise, with a total that could be even more than 55-60k, when all the Christian book store returns come in.

RCA's Imogen Heap, a Best New Artist Grammy nominee several years back, returns with Ellipse, her follow-up for the label, which looks on track for 45-50k in first-week sales, not bad at all.

Sony's Now Country 2 is in the 35-40k range, while the rest of the list of newcomers looks like this:

Letoya (Capitol) 25-30k; Arctic Monkeys (Domino) 25-30k; Ingrid Michaelson (Cabin 24) 20-25k, battling back and forth for #1 at iTunes today with Caillat; Collective Soul (Roadrunner) 18-22k; Matisyahu (Epic) 15-18k; Love & Theft (Hollywood) 15-18k; Jet (Real Horrorshow/EMM) 15-18k; Queen Latifah (Flavor Unit/Verve) 15-18k; Needtobreathe (Atlantic) 12-15k, and David Guetta (Astralwerks) 10-12k.

The market was down 3% vs. last week, down 18% vs. same week last year and now down 15% year to date.

Maybe we should take a tip from Guy Hands and buy the wind farm...