We have been completely enamored with Blackpool, England's Little Boots since the day we heard her debut single "Stuck On Repeat". We expressed our affection by signing up for her mailing list, and she frequently returns the favor with links to her new blog, her corny YouTube covers and occasionally a stellar mix like this one, which, much like her own music, can be used for either dancing or staring out the office window. You can buy Lil Boots's next single, "Meddle" (co-produced with Joe Goddard from Hot Chip, just like "Stuck on Repeat") right now as 7-inch at Pure Groove (vinyl comes with "fantasy tattoos"), or wait until November and buy the Arecibo EP, coming out on Iamsound Records which features "Meddle," "Stuck on Repeat" and remixes from Fake Blood and Ebola. Also, you could take the free stuff below and be on your way. But know this, after reading our sweet little Gen F piece on her after the jump, you will feel pretty terrible for taking and not giving from this girl.
Download: Little Boots' Computer Fairyland Mix
Stream: Little Boots, "Meddle"
Download: Little Boots, "Meddle (Acoustic Version)"
POPULARITY CONTEST
Little Boots' revenge of the nerd
Story Scott Wright Photography Guy Martin
Little Boots makes it clear that she does not think she is cool. Born in Blackpool (England’s tacky seaside capital, known affectionately as “The Las Vegas of the North”), instead of hanging out with the other kids at school, little Victoria Hesketh would hide in the music room playing Beethoven on the piano. Right now she is obsessed with unicorns, fantasy art and space. She has a YouTube channel for her endearingly rubbish covers of pop hits by everyone from Wiley to Miley Cyrus. Like most things in her world, it is a joke that got way out of hand. “I’m a complete nerd. What kind of person stays in and learns how to play the Tenori-On?” she says of the fancy Japanese light and sound sequencer that she makes music on and that has recently killed her social life. Yet this fizzy 24-year-old is also the creator of “Stuck on Repeat,” the impossibly cool italo house epic that pulsated like a dance floor’s living heart earlier this year.
Little Boots secretly wrote “Stuck on Repeat” while drifting apart from her former band, Dead Disco. A rough demo was dispatched to Joe Goddard of Hot Chip, a friend-of-a-friend who offered his production skills. “He records everything in his bedroom,” she explains. “So there I was, surrounded by all these old synths, the brains of Hot Chip sitting on the end of his bed, recording the vocals.” Their continuing collaboration soon spawned a new song, “Meddle.” “If [‘Stuck on Repeat’] was me trying to be Kylie [Minogue] and Joe trying to
be Giorgio [Moroder], then ‘Meddle’ is Joe’s stab at Timbaland and I’m Nelly Furtado,” she says. “But we always fail. I think that’s what’s brilliant about it.”
Strong-willed and exploding with ideas, Boots is gleefully piling up projects. After a night out with Dev of Lightspeed Champion, she ended up singing on his new songs with Basement Jaxx. She’s been writing with Andres from Alphabeat, and has hatched a plan with Anita of Thecocknbullkid to cover Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine,” but only if another friend, Joe from Metronomy, will produce. After hearing her cover of Wiley’s “Wearing My Rolex,” producer Bless Beats approached her about appearing on a new song. “A grime song,” says Boots. “I don’t think he knows I’m from Blackpool.” And then there is her own album. “It’s going to be very pop,” she says in typically disarming fashion. “I’m not going to make any excuses for that because it really challenges me. I want to make a record that people from my hometown can buy in Woolworths.”
