>Rock ‘n’ roll depends on surprises for its excitement. Just look at Coldplay and their plodding snooze-rock as an example of how predictability ruins any attempts of thrills. This is why Chris Martin, who is, remember, signed to a multi-million pound record deal with the multinational company EMI, writes Fair Trade slogans on his hand, and names his children after fruit. No-one seems to have pointed out to him that a simpler way of appearing ‘edgy’ would be to record some songs that don’t sound as if they are explicitly written for car adverts.

Today’s New Band, Transmittens, are all about surprises. Their name and music pops a big, happy, colourful clown’s balloon in front of your face, and because of that it’s easy to miss the glumly sung lyrics while you’re happily running around in the subsequent glitterstorm. Transmittens are a little bit like a down-tempo Bis. Not only is their sound reminiscent of an acoustic, less Japan-o-frenzied approach, but their cuteness is similarly tweaked to a more introspective level. That’s of course, assuming, that introspective cuteness is even possible.

Up All Night isn’t a tale of rock ‘n’ roll excess at all, but a story of someone not being able to stay up, even thought they’d like to. In Our Dreams the nursery-school melody disguises lyrics as grim as “Why oh why did we come all this way to say goodbye? Because dreams don’t come true – but we thought maybe they do,” and Saturday Socks is so stupidly upbeat that the glum lyrics get missed because you’ll be happily shaking your head like a 1960’s Top of The Pops audience member.

So, as such, Transmittens are a lovely mind-melting band, coating gloomy lyrics with so much sugar, you’d be happy to gulp them down all day long. Listen to their great songs here!