(this should be more) POPular #6

You know that thing when you hear a song and you can't believe it hasn't been a massive hit? Yeah, that...

This week's hidden gem comes from a British popstar who flirted with the mainstream early on in her career but has since taken a more independent path as her music has developed.

Little Boots (Victoria Hesketh) is a electropop pixie from Blackpool who more than know's her way around a bloody good pop song. An ex member and lead singer of the now-defunct electropunk band Dead Disco (responsible for the rather wonderful 'Automatic') she went solo in 2007 and started to upload original songs and covers to Myspace and YouTube. In just over a year she had enough material for an album and started to work with producer Greg Kurstin. The fruit of their labours was the album 'Hands' which was home to her first single 'New in Town', pop masterpiece (co-written and produced by RedOne nonetheless) 'Remedy' and the criminally underrated 'Earthquake'. (Also check out the glorious cross-generational duet with the Human League's Phil Oakey 'Symmetry', what a tune!) 

'Hands' was a moderate success but despite this, winning the BBC Sound of 2009 poll and being nominated for the BRIT's Critic's Choice award Little Boots didn't managed the mainstream success her material deserved.

Little Boots retreated from the limelight, parted ways with her record label and set up her own, On Repeat Records, through which she released her sophomore album 'Nocturnes' in 2013. Less mainstream pop and more dance-influenced her second album contained the old school house-inflected 'Shake', a 6 minute monster of a tune, the Pet Shop Boys-esque 'Every Night I Say a Prayer', 'Broken Record' and the gorgeously euphoric 'Satellite'. 

Last year Little Boots returned to the pop landscape with her latest EP 'Business Pleasure' and this is home to our featured track this week, the rather superb 'Taste It'

A prowling bassline and stuttering beats work well alongside Little Boots' pop vocal (those 'la la la's' are such an earworm. Much more sparse and challenging than her previous material it was probably never going to be a massive chart smash, but it's great to hear Little Boots making the music she so obviously wants to, damn convention and what is successful in the charts right now. 

"Just to taste it, you want it,

No questions, no drama,

There's a chink in your armour.

And you cannot be broken,

You're a drop in the ocean,

Now the wheels are in motion."

Also, can we just have a moment for the random, bizarre and 80's-tastic video - Little Boots suits being a power-suited bitch!

This makes me very excited for the upcoming 3rd album, 'Working Girl', scheduled for release in July.

You can follow Little Boots on social media:

twitter - @littleboots

facebook - Little Boots

instagram - @littlebootsphotos