The Dolly Rockers – our new favourite band!

We’ve been meaning to tell you about the Dolly Rockers for ages. The official excuse for our tardiness is that we were waiting for the record company to cough up their album sampler – and cough it up they have! So now, there’s no excuse for us not to tell you that the Dolly Rockers are effing brilliant.

Brooke, Lucie and Sophie may have started life as unmemorable X-Factor also-rans but one look and listen now and you’ll be hard pressed to forget them. With a slightly shambolic yet cutely kitsch style, it’s been a long time since a pop act arrived on the scene with this much attitude (they’ve already slagged off The Saturdays) – and we love ‘em for it. The video to their song Je Suis Une Dolly, complete with their trademark tongue-in-cheek lyrics and heavy Brit accents (even for the French bits!), just about sums them up; filmed around various locations guerrilla-style in London (shortly before they got chucked out of most of them), it captures their madcap D.I.Y. appeal.

We’re thinking wild fusion between the Spice Girls and Blur’s most mainstream moments (especially on North Vs. South), with sprinklings of Shampoo, Kenickie and Bananarama. But a lot more fresh than that sounds. First single Gold Digger, a pop at tarts who date men for money (yes, it is that un-PC), is out on August 31; the beat chips away at you like a wily woodpecker until you succumb and you can listen to it and other songs on their Myspace. But the standout on their album sampler is How Did I End Up With You, probably the closest thing they’ll come to a ballad (thank God!) and a whooshing slice of wonderful that proves the Dollies aren’t one trick ponies.

More likely to grab a kebab than a canapé or stumble on their stilettos than break out into a slick dance routine, they just have that X-Factor thing that Cowell and co. bang on about. Bright and brash, cheeky but charming and just a little bit rude but all the better for it, they’re exactly the antidote to anodyne we’ve been looking for. But what do you think of the Dolly Rockers – shit or hit?