Little Boots

In the late 1970s, the West Yorkshire college town of Leeds was a post-punk hotbed, spawning the Mekons, the Gang of Four, and Scritti Politti. In 2005, shortly after she was bounced from the reality TV competition Pop Idol in the early rounds, teenage singer and keyboardist Victoria Hesketh attended the University of Leeds, forming post-punk revivalists Dead Disco with a pair of schoolfriends. The all-female trio's nervy electro updating of classic Leeds post-punk attracted a fair amount of buzz, with a handful of singles on hipster-cred indies like Fierce Panda followed by a major-label deal and work on a debut album with producer Greg Kurstin (The Bird and the Bee, Lily Allen, etc.). But the trio split during the early stages of recording, as Hesketh's new songs dropped the indie-rock pretense in favor of a pure-pop gloss on classic early 1980s synth pop heavily influenced by classics like the Human League's Dare and Scritti Politti's Cupid and Psyche 85. Cheekily renaming herself Little Boots (the literal translation of Caligula's name; a friend had compared the pint-size pixie to the notorious Roman emperor), Hesketh released her solo debut, Hands, in the summer of 2009.