White Flowers

For songwriting duo Joey Cobb and Katie Drew of White Flowers, one of the most exciting young bands in the UK right now, it was only on leaving London to return to their native Preston that the dark-hued dreampop of their debut album, Day By Day, began to crystalize.

RECOMMENDED
It's usually a pretty reassuring sentiment when a band declares that they "never really wanted to sound like this". It tells us everything we need to know about how the end product, stylistically, found them as much as they found it. And how the songs they make are natural and entirely of them. White Flowers' Katie Drew made a similar statement ahead of this, the debut album from a duo comprising her and fellow Prestonian Joey Cobb.

Having discovered London's psyche scene while studying at arts college in the capital, the pair returned north to the bleak wastelands half of England frequently forgets exists. Evidently a good move, as the resulting record doesn't sound like most of London's psyche scene. Instead, it's somewhere between the opiate seduction of Goldfrapp, the understated but intense emotions of Cocteau Twins, and the dark undercurrent of Nadine Shah. You might not agree, but either way give it a play.