I just heard a great remix of Matinee by Franz Ferdinand that's got my feet tapping and my fingers bouncing off anything within arm's reach that will make noise.

Years ago I heard a drum-n-bass beat from LTJ Bukem or someone and I still tap it out on my desk when I'm thinking about things.

Addictiveness is in the eye of the beholder, but I've been absolutely obsessed with Ossie Hibbert's two dub albums, Leggo Dub and Earthquake Dub, with the Revolutionaries (the Channel One house band, featuring among others Sly Dunbar of Sly and Robbie fame). If you don't like dub, or reggae, I'm probably not going to sell you on it, but these are great albums, and Ossie is, in my view, one of the more underrated producers in the genre.

Wow box, we're on the same plane. I just got Earthquake Dub last week.

I'm still finding Marko Fürstenberg's "Classics" to be really tasty. Four tracks on the album, and they're all addictive. Minimal downbeat/techno, nice 'n heavy on the bass.
DeepMix.ru used to have this track - dj Face Off's "Dub Mix" (54 meg file!) up on their Selected Music list, but it's not there any more. Good thing I grabbed it when I had the chance. (bVoice and Meshkov are good places to start, too.)

Pretty much all the music I like has 'addictive beats' because rhythm is one of the primary aspects of music that attracts me.
Holst's Mars was probably the first song to demonstate this to me, although at the time I didn't know why it was my favourite. Once you have heard the distinctive 5/4 (?) rhythm you cannot forget it.

A good beat just makes so much sense, it's inescapable. There is a reason that rhythm is used in all african syncretic religions. As one of my friends dad's once commented 'hip hop is all voodoo music'. At the time we had a good laugh at his fear-mongering, but in retrospect I think he was correct. It's just that i don't think that it is necessarily a bad thing.

Behold the son clave, on it's own it has an ineffable addictiveness and asymetrical beauty, but joined by the rest of the instruments in the the rhythm section it really lives up to the name 'key'. The son clave serves as a gateway drug to cuban music.
Then you have the rumba clave, move one note of the son clave half a beat and you have a completely different beast somehow. Coupled with the fact that rumba musicians count the clave in the opposite way to salsa/son musicians it gives the music a completely different feel. Raw funk.
Most music has distinctive rhythm aspects, it is just in the West that we think of the metronomic tick-tock of the 4/4 beat as normal.

Anyway, enough of the didactic verbiage.

My recent playlist includes:
For the melody
Machel Montano - Miss Good Reputation (flash site - no direct link)
Djuma Soundsystem - Les Djinns (Trentemoller Remix)
Yma Sumac
For the rhythm
Cuban Rumba
For a bit of both
Jon Gomm (check the video links for some proper guitar playing)

The other day I picked up "Super Ape Inna Jungle" with Lee 'scratch' Perry and the mad professor, and as Lee hollers that he's Peter Pan over that *ooom ooooom oooom bipp* I seriously feel stoned. Also, I can't get it out of my head. Luverly.

I played it at the end when I played my little monkey thing on mecha radio. Just to torture whomever was listening. ;)

Awesome. I've got some research to do. Thanks folks. Just seeing the word clave makes my feet want to move.