>I spent a while last weekend watching horses mill around in a field. I like horses – they are less dumb than cows, yet still daft enough to trot over and enthusiastically munch handfuls of grass from me as if it was a rare treat, as opposed to exactly the same stuff they’d been eating straight from the ground all day.

One curious equine trait I noticed is that they will spend hours gnawing on grass that has previously been grazed to near-nothingness, while big, lush clumps of long grass wait, temptingly and un-chewed, just a few metres away. Perhaps, having found a patch of grass they like, they don’t really fancy change, in case it’s not as good.

This unwillingness to try something that might be different is what keeps Simon Cowell in a gold-plated mansion full of supermodels, stiff hair brushes and expensive, monochrome clothing. The only reason people keep buying the safe mawkish pop that Leona Lewis et al grind out is because they daren’t buy something a but more edgy like, ooh, Girls Aloud; who have more pop, sazz and fun than anything stroppy Simon has ever produced.

Today’s New Band won’t get signed by auditioning on a TV freakshow, but they make great power-pop records, and are called Race Horses, which ties everything together quite nicely.

Their single Cake is a great sliver of jangling teenage hormonal punky-pop, with a frankly ludicrous chorus of, “She wanted cake. Cake! She was the one who turned me on to it”. Whether it’s a cute teeny-pop ode to a girl who preferred pastries to fooling around, or a reference to some drug pseudonym that hasn’t leapt this far over the age gap yet, I don’t know, but I strongly hope it’s the former.

Cacen Mamgu is partly sung in the lovely Welsh language, but the shouty initial chorus sounded like “Chocolate fountain! Chocolate fountain!” to my untrained ear, which works for me. It’s another sweet buzzy sherbert-fuelled weirdo pop song.

Race Horses are a dead cert to leap out of the traps (I’ll stop now) and craft a sweet poppy future for themselves. Listen here!