New Young Pony Club - 'Fantastic Playroom' (Island) Released 09/07/07

Imagine, for a second, the trendiest party you were never invited to. You know – the ones that the pouting fashion students with razor-sharp fringes at university used to talk about while you solemnly tucked into your snakebite n' black. It's probably in a squat somewhere in East London, with someone doing 'challenging' performance art in the corner and Pete Doherty mainlining smack in the bathroom. Now – see that band playing to a vast, swaying audience of scenesters at the far end of the room? That's New Young Pony Club, that is.

The London-based band, fresh from a tour with CSS and Klaxons, are the hippest thing on the block since, well, the last bunch of well-dressed electro misfits – they couldn't be more 'now' if they'd been incubated in test tubes by the Klaxons until last week. It probably doesn't hurt their cause that they all look like they've stepped straight out of a Vogue shoot, but their winning combination of ice-cold sauciness and dirty 80's synths certainly makes you feel exactly 67 per cent cooler when you have it blaring through your earphones on a packed commuter train.

Singer Tahita has that disinterested-but-sassy Kate Jackson vocal delivery that drives indie boys wild with unrequited lust and girls green with trendy-envy. Crucially, though, NYPC's dance-influenced songs suit her voice better and are (and I'll probably get beaten around the chops with a pink Converse for saying this) stronger than much of the work on the Long Blondes' debut, 'Someone to Drive You Home'. Single 'Ice Cream' with the knee-trembling lyrics about "I can give you what you want/ I can be the sauce you crave/ Come on and dip your dipper", is utterly indicative of the album's deeply salacious funk – eminently danceable and utterly, utterly filthy.