Victoria Christina Hesketh, aka Little Boots, has a new video out for another song, ‘Earthquake’, from her debut album ‘Hands’ released in the UK in June. Directed by David Wilson, the Little one is sat with her synth in her lap, and she is set off by a brilliantly glowing moon and some rad sky special effects, and pulsating internal body parts. Check it out.

Currently the toast of the national press, Little Boots has announced an October tour (just like everybody else it seems).

Catch her at the below dates. Tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday morning (25th June).

Wednesday 21st October 2009 – Northampton Roadmender
Thursday 22nd October 2009 – Brighton Concorde 2
Friday 23rd October 2009 – Sunderland Uni
Sunday 25th October 2009 – Edinburgh HMV Picture House
Monday 26th October 2009 – Preston 53 Degrees
Tuesday 27th October 2009 – Liverpool O2 Academy
Thursday 29th October 2009 – Cambridge Junction
Friday 30th October 2009 – Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall
Saturday 31st October 2009 – Bristol University

Glittery girls armed with keyboards as weaponry have certainly been taking over the airwaves this 2009. La Roux, Lady GaGa and Little Boots are just some of the women triumphantly leading the electro-pop revolution. But who is the best of this, perhaps a little overcrowded, female disco crop? Well, Little Boots, aka Victoria Hesketh, already has herself a head start. She’s been hailed as the “future of British pop”, and back in January, came out top on the BBC Sound of 2009 poll, which aimed to recognise major up and coming talent. Unsurprisingly then, Miss. Boots certainly has a lot to live up to through her debut album, ‘Hands’, which is released today.

I shall begin by commenting that Little Boots is very good at what she does. Her debut album is filled with perfectly friendly electro-pop, fit for indie-discos across the country. Stronger tracks on ‘Hands’ include album opener, ‘New in Town’, an incredibly addictive number thanks to it’s dry synths and fierce drumbeat. Admittedly, it may not have the greatest lyrics going (“I’m gunna take you out tonight. I’m gunna make you feel alright.”), yet this doesn’t matter. Little Boots is here to make you dance, and boy does this track make you wanna do just that. ‘Earthquake’ and ‘Stuck on Repeat’ are similarly catchy tunes. The latter track’s verses protrude with dark synths, contrasting well with the light and fluffy vocals of the chorus which sees Hesketh poppily proclaim “My heart’s skipping! Skipping! And I don’t know why!”. Meanwhile, the Game Boy synths of ‘Mathematics’ are sheer brilliance, along with the song’s fittingly numerical lyrics – “Cos your X is equal to my Y, but equations pass me by.”. The frantic, zig-zaggey beats of ‘Meddle’ prove why this track caused such a buzz around Lil’ Boots earlier on in the year, while Hesketh literally brings her 80s-influences to the record via ‘Symmetry’, a track featuring a truly brilliant duet with The Human League’s Phil Oakley.

Lower points amid the album include the unmemorable ‘Click’, and the limp ‘Ghost’, which, despite it’s unusual, military-like percussion, drags on a fair bit towards the end of the song due to the annoyingly repetitive vocals. Furthermore, tracks such as ‘Hearts Collide’ and ‘Remedy’ show that Hesketh’s sweetly sound can sometimes grow a little monotonous, with the least outstanding tracks on the album often merging into one, easily forgettable electro-pop mash.

However, we must remember this is a debut album and we cannot expect to have an utterly flawless record this early on in the game. What we evidentially do have with ‘Hands’, however, is an incredibly-decent pop artist who is taking both her music, and the ‘pop’ genre as a whole, very seriously. All in all, Victoria Hesketh clearly has a long career of making people dance ahead of her, and for that reason alone, I’d certainly like to declare Little Boots the new Princess of pop.

Little Boots‘ new album, Hands, is out now. Buy it from Amazon now. Watch the video for current single, New In Town below.

Bestival is a three-day, action-packed music festival held every year at Robin Hill Country Park on the beautiful Isle of Wight. The bash is well-known for being one of the final music festivals to be squeezed out of the last of the summer months, and this year Bestival will be taking place appropriately late – between Friday 11th to Sunday 13th September.

The festival initially started out 5 years ago and has grown in both size and popularity since then. The brainchild of Radio 1 DJ Rob da Bank, Bestival is renowned for both it’s diverse line ups as well as it’s super fun atmosphere.

Headliners confirmed for this year’s event include Elbow, Massive Attack and Kraftwerk. Other quite simply amazing acts taking to the stage this 2009 include (and we stress, include!) MGMT, Fleet Foxes, Doves, Seasick Steve, Klaxons, Lily Allen, Friendly Fires, Florence and the Machine, Little Boots, Esser, Passion Pit, Chew Lips, La Roux and Jack Penate.

Meanwhile, DJs who’ll be spinning the decks at the Isle of Wight bash this year include Annie Mac, Huw Stephens, Zane Lowe and the boss himself, Rob da Bank.

Yet this is only a minuscule look into the massive selection of artists and DJs confirmed for this year’s event. You can grab the complete line-up over at Bestival’s website by hitting this link.

But music, no matter how impressive the line up may be, isn’t completely what this festival is about. Bestival is also a celebration of fun, and this year looks set to be one hell of a party.

Every year, for example, the festival has a fancy dress theme, and this 2009 the theme is ‘outer space’! So why not visit ‘The Dressing Up Area’, complete with a ‘Pimp My Outfit Booth’ to adorn yourself in such clothing wonderment while at the festival?

If fancy dress isn’t your thing, how about you check out ‘Heavenly Healing’ or ‘The Pamper Lounge’, two beautifully relaxing retreats providing festival-goers with a range of therapeutic treatments between their sweaty head banging sessions.

Other delights you can experience while at this dreamy festival include the tasty treats of ‘Buttercupcakes Afternoon Tea Hut’, the dizzying heights of the ‘The Big Wheel’, the jam-packed ‘The Village’ (complete with a farmers market and sushi stall!), ‘The Kids Garden’ for wee festival goers, and the famous ‘Inflatable Church’ should you fancy getting married along the way!

Wow! So, to learn more about this rollercoster of a festival, check out Bestival’s website. An adult weekend ticket for the event costs £140, and this includes camping. Tickets are still available for the fest and can be purchased from most ticket outlets. Check out the site for more information on where to purchase yours. Have fun!

Top photo is taken from alex_lee2001’s flickr stream under the Creative Commons License.

We all hear about the major summer festivals taking place across Blighty this ‘09 – but here at There Goes The Fear, we like to bring you previews of those smaller, little known music events too! This week, we’d like to tell you about Evolution 2009. The festival, which started back in 2005, has grown rapidly in both size and popularity over the past few years and Evolution ‘09 looks set to be the biggest and best yet!

The Newcastle-based festival is certainly ahead of the big name summer events in the calender stakes, taking place across the May bank holiday (Sunday 24th – Sunday 25th May). Still, the outdoor shows, which will take place along Gateshead’s quayside, are fully expected to attract a crowd of around 60,000. Judging by the line-up, we can see why!

Headliners confirmed so far include Dizzee Rascal, The Wombats (pictured right), Mystery Jets, The View and The Maccabees. Other impressive TGTF-favourites playing the Evolution Weekender include White Lies, Ladyhawke, Esser, Friendly Fires, Little Boots, Twisted Wheel, Marina and the Diamonds, Chapman Family, VV Brown and The Big Pink.

(And breathhhh….!) Impressive, don’t you agree? You can even catch headline electronica acts such as Boys Noize, Chase & Status Live and Kissy Sell Out over at the dance stage too, should something a little less guitar-based take your fancy.

If it couldn’t get any better, a weekend ticket for Evolution 2009 is priced at just £15! You can also grab a day ticket for £9.50 (note : only weekend tickets are on sale at the moment – day tickets go on sale Thursday!). Furthermore, a contribution of the ticket price will be donated to WaterAid. If you’d like to learn more about the festival and general ticket info, check out Evolution 2009’s website.

Disco queen, Victoria Hesketh, better known as Little Boots, is rapidly taking the music scene by storm with her sweet electro beats. She’s been labelled the British Kylie and Little Boots’ synth-based pop is certainly a Minogue chart contender.

Born in Blackpool, Hesketh has quite a colourful music past. She’s been a Pop Idol contestant, a former member of dance band Dead Disco and has recently blagged Joe Goddard of Hot Chip as her new musical producer. In fact Joe – who’s personal hits include Over and Over and and Ready For The Floors – is so fond of Little Boots that he’s hailed Victoria as the future of British pop. Quite a claim – but it’s certainly a worthy one. Little Boots has expressed her love for current chart pop, such as Sugababes and Girls Aloud, but she believes her music is injected with more personality. And Victoria certainly is a glittery character.

A particularly exciting thing about Little Boots is her use of a range of mystical instruments when creating her sparkly sounds – including the Dubreq Stylophone, made popular by the genius that is Rolf Harris, and a Tenori-O, a super cool LED switch based invention allowing for the creation of “visible music”. Check out Little Boots acclaimed kooky performance using said instruments, on Jools Holland, below:

Little Boots is yet to release an album, although one is pretty much guaranteed out this year thanks to the critical acclaim she is currently lapping up – including a BBC Sound of 2009 nomination. In the meantime though, never fear, as you can purchase her digital, 3 track EP over at Amazon now for just £1.69.The EP includes the track you just saw Victoria performing, Meddle, and 2 other tunes – Stuck on Repeat and Love Kills. If you want to learn more about Little Boots in general, check out her MySpace here

I know, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts.

First up, following on from Mike’s posts about his tips for BBC’s Sound of 2009 competition (part 1 here, part 2 here), they’ve announced the longlist, which features no less than FIVEartists we have already featured on TGTF. The longlist sees Dan Black (who we featured here and here, and is pictured, right), Florence and the Machine (who we introduced here), La Roux (who we introduced here), White Lies (who we gave details of their tour here).  VV Brown has also been tipped in comments around the site too. On the longlist, they’re joined by:The Big Pink, Empire of the Sun, Frankmusik, Kid Cudi, Lady GaGa, Little Boots, Master Shortie, Mumford & Sons, Passion Pit and The Temper Trap.

Phew, there’s a lot of new music there! To conteract the newness of those, we bring you an oldie but a goldie: Tom Jones, but as you’ve never seen him before….

If that’s not some clever CGI, I don’t know what is…

Our friends over at Gig Junkie have pointed out that they have a lot of pretty amazing competitions going at the moment – if times are tight for you, pop on over and enter a competition or two – they have the chance to win tickets to see Kings of Leon, VIP style.

It seems rather a lot of you love Nickelback (pictured, right, and who incidentally are on tour next year… see my seamless link there?), so you might want to check out some exclusive tracks they played in the USA recently. I’ve had “Gotta Be Somebody” stuck in my head recently, and got to admit that slowly they’re getting under my skin!

Our friends over at Winston’s Zen have just posted their new monthy Zen list of all things great and free in MP3 land – check it out and have a listen.

Right, I think that’s it for tonight… I’m off to have a listen to those of the BBC Sound of 2009 longlist nominees that I don’t know much about, and Winston’s Zen’s new MP3s….

The sensational Shockwaves NME Awards shows have been announced for next January and February to start off a 2009 in great style. The likes of Franz Ferdinand, The Wombats and Simian Mobile Disco are among this year’s great gigs, with more to be announced shortly.

Franz Ferdinand’s frontman Alex Kapranos said of their opening night honour: “We’re going to play the gig to celebrate ‘Ulysess’ coming out and Heaven is the best place to go and celebrate. The new songs are the type that should be heard in clubs so we liked the idea of playing a show in one. We want people close to us who are dancing and sweating, that’s the vibe that we want. We definitely don’t want polite theatre shows for this record- we want some excitement!”

Tickets are available exclusively at NME from 9am on Wednesday, 26th November and then go on general sale on Monday 1st December.

UPDATE: More gigs added today (2nd December 2008) – full details below.

Catch the full details of the gigs below:

Tuesday 20th January 2009 – Franz Ferdinand @ London Heaven
Sunday 8th February 2009 – The Gaslight Anthems, Frank Turner and The Polar Bear Club @ London Shepherds Bush Empire
Monday 9th February 2009 – Howling Bells @ London Islington Academy
Tuesday 10th February 2009 – The View @ London Koko
Wednesday 11th February 2009 – Ida Maria @ London Koko
Thursday 12th February 2009 – Ida Maria @ Manchester Club Academy
Thursday 12th February 2009 – Simian Mobile Disco and Chrome Hoof @ London Koko
Friday 13th February 2009 – Ida Maria @ Glasgow Garage
Friday 13th February 2009 – Mystery Jets and Little Boots @ London Shepherds Bush Empire
Sunday 15th February 2009 – Black Lips and Vivian Girls @ London Islington Academy
Monday 16th February 2009 – Secret Machines @ London Islington Academy
Tuesday 17th February 2009 – Iglu and Hartley @ London Islington Academy
Wednesday 18th February 2009 – Black Kids, Boy Crisis, Passion Pit @ London Koko
Wednesday 18th February 2009 – Tricky @ Manchester Club Academy
Wednesday 18th February 2009 – Iglu and Hartley @ Manchester Academy 3
Thursday 19th February 2009 – Tricky @ Glasgow Arches
Thursday 19th February 2009 – Iglu and Hartley @ Glasgow QMU
Thursday 19th February 2009 – Roots Manuva @ London Koko
Friday 20th February 2009 – Tricky @ London Shepherds Bush Empire
Monday 23rd February 2009 – Wombats @ London Shepherds Bush Empire
Tuesday 24th February 2009 – Metronomy @ London Koko
Tuesday 24th February 2009 – Wombats @ Manchester Academy
Thursday 26th February 2009 – Wombats @ Glasgow Barrowlands