No 302: Bo Pepper
Hometown: LondonThe lineup: Dolly Molloy (vocals, guitar, microkorg), Nick Cartwheel (guitar, backing vocals), Will E Nailor (bass, backing vocals), Jonny Dangerous (drums, backing vocals)The background: Bo Pepper are a female-fronted four-piece from London who won't blow your mind with their startling sonic invention but will massage your senses with their effervescent punk-pop. They don't currently have a record deal, nor do they have a manager, but they have managed to excite attention across the board, from Jonathan Ross on Radio 2 and Steve Lamacq on 6 Digital to Perez Hilton at pop-gossip mainline www.perezhilton.com, who has described the band as like Polly Harvey singing with the Gossip's rhythm section or KT Tunstall reborn as a Strokes/Stooges groupie. Or, as Bo Pepper themselves put it: "We r unsigned, unmanaged, unrubbish."
Their single Blinkandyou'llmissit! Was, in the band's own words, recorded "for about 10p and seemingly mixed by a deaf child" and sounds like the Knack's My Sharona shrieked by Karen O through Julian Casablancas' voice box (Gordon Raphael is keen to produce them). But even if their shrill-but-sassy punk sonatas don't appeal, they've got these great sock puppets that they use for their artwork and videos, which have already earned them a fair degree of cult interest on the internet. Their stop-motion animated shorts feature the cutest/creepiest knitted creatures since Mr Oizo and have so far notched up over 700,000 hits on the web, making them more popular than Sooty but less so than Orville in the hands-up-animal-jacksies stakes. Some of their other achievements include winning an unsigned band competition held by Q magazine, playing a set for Channel 4's Road To V and securing a synch for an online Coca Cola ad campaign with their track Buses, which gets revenge on behalf of females everywhere (following yesterday's girl-repelling New Band of the Day, Isosceles) by comparing fellas to the titular mode of transport.If you want to see/hear for yourselves what the radio and TV fuss is all about, Bo Pepper have virtually colonised London's indie dives such as the Dublin Castle, the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen and the Soho Revue where they can regularly be found supporting the likes of Cage the Elephant, Pete and the Pirates and Bombay Bicycle Club. We're still not sure if their name sounds like a fizzy drink or the cure for a hygiene disorder, but they're a splendid way to waste your time.The buzz: "The music is great! Like St Etienne rubbing sun-tan lotion over T-Rex on a crowded beach."The truth: They're a Primark Gossip fronted by a malnourished Beth Ditto.Most likely to: Coax Elastica and Echobelly out of retirement.Least likely to: Encourage Louise Wener to pen a treatise on the influence of Sleeper on 21st century indie-rock.What to buy: Blinkandyou'llmissit! is available to download from iTunes.File next to: Elastica, Republica, PJ Harvey, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.Links:www.myspace.com/bopepper and www.bopepper.comTomorrow's new band: Lucy & The Caterpillar
