Any advice to recovering iTunes songs?

So long story short, my Apple laptop corrupted, fried, and died on me. The hard drive is beyond repair. When it died, I lost all my music that I had bought from good ol' iTunes. Now I have a new laptop ( really a used Toshiba with Windows Vista) and have re-downloaded iTunes. My problem is, obviously, that I need to get my lost songs back. I've already sent an e-mail on the situation and hope some good news comes. But, I wrote this hoping some one here has had a similar experience and how they dealt with it. Any advice is much appreciated on my end. Thanks in advance.