alt-J write songs about triangles, they named themselves after a keyboard shortcut on a Mac and refuse to show their faces in photographs. And we haven’t even touched on their quirkiest bits yet. Vocalist Joe Newman warbles and mumbles as though trying to sing through a closed mouth, whilst the musical undulations beneath him only serve to multiply ‘An Awesome Wave’’s charms. ‘Matilda’ is superb, squirmy avant-pop, ‘Tessellate’ sports a pleasing, stuttering, polyrhythm, whilst ‘Breezeblocks’ skitters beneath multilayered vocals. The folk alternative to Everything Everything? Quite possibly…

By Dannii Leivers