The first record to be released from 2009's trinity of Ladypop (La Roux's self-titled album and Florence And The Machine's 'Lungs' follow in the next few weeks), 'Hands' has been a much anticipated piece of work. Much effort has been made by her record company to market Little Boots (Victoria Hesketh to her friends) as another indie darling, playing up her use of an unusual Japanese sequencer, the Tenori-on, and booking her for festival performances all through the summer, but this is largely for show; there is nothing about Little Boots' music that is strictly for the indie crowd. Her music bears close relation to Kylie, and it's not difficult to imagine these songs setting up camp in stadia around Europe in the near future, such is their mass appeal.

It's perhaps no coincidence that most tracks clock in at around the three-minute mark - the widely accepted ideal length for the perfect pop song - and the whole album seems to fly by. There are enough references to hearts to make you suspect she requires the services of an eminent cardiologist, but this serves simply to illustrate where the album is aimed: each song is an exquisitely crafted, hooky Euro-pop work through, from the pulsing 'Stuck On Repeat' to the fragile 'Tune Into My Heart'. Other highlights include the insanely catchy 'Click', which sounds like it could have been recorded by Girls Aloud, 'Mathematics' (love as an algebra equation) and 'Earthquake', which contains a chorus seemingly in existence since the beginning of time which has been waiting for someone to put it down in a studio. Hesketh also doffs her cap and pays due respect to the 80s electronic music which has clearly inspired her by duetting with the Human League's Phil Oakey on possible single 'Symmetry', yet another tune with an impeccably catchy chorus backed by bleeps, glitches and hands-in-the-air-like-you're-in-a-Moscow-nightclub synths.

The album concludes with the surprising hidden title track, a song on which the Euro stylised Little Boots is stripped down to the bear bones of piano and vocal. Sounding like a more conventional Regina Spektor, the song describes in passionate tones the story of a friend requesting that she mend her broken heart, only to be told by Hesketh that "I just don't have the technology". The track has the pleasing effect of engendering the listener with the thought that, should she wish, there is another direction Little Boots could successfully explore. For now though it seems she's content to plunder what could be a rich mine of electropop tunes.

The first record to be released from 2009's trinity of Ladypop (La Roux's self-titled album and Florence And The Machine's 'Lungs' follow in the next few weeks), 'Hands' has been a much anticipated piece of work. Much effort has been made by her record company to market Little Boots (Victoria Hesketh to her friends) as another indie darling, playing up her use of an unusual Japanese sequencer, the Tenori-on, and booking her for festival performances all through the summer, but this is largely for show; there is nothing about Little Boots' music that is strictly for the indie crowd. Her music bears close relation to Kylie, and it's not difficult to imagine these songs setting up camp in stadia around Europe in the near future, such is their mass appeal.

It's perhaps no coincidence that most tracks clock in at around the three-minute mark - the widely accepted ideal length for the perfect pop song - and the whole album seems to fly by. There are enough references to hearts to make you suspect she requires the services of an eminent cardiologist, but this serves simply to illustrate where the album is aimed: each song is an exquisitely crafted, hooky Euro-pop work through, from the pulsing 'Stuck On Repeat' to the fragile 'Tune Into My Heart'. Other highlights include the insanely catchy 'Click', which sounds like it could have been recorded by Girls Aloud, 'Mathematics' (love as an algebra equation) and 'Earthquake', which contains a chorus seemingly in existence since the beginning of time which has been waiting for someone to put it down in a studio. Hesketh also doffs her cap and pays due respect to the 80s electronic music which has clearly inspired her by duetting with the Human League's Phil Oakey on possible single 'Symmetry', yet another tune with an impeccably catchy chorus backed by bleeps, glitches and hands-in-the-air-like-you're-in-a-Moscow-nightclub synths.

The album concludes with the surprising hidden title track, a song on which the Euro stylised Little Boots is stripped down to the bear bones of piano and vocal. Sounding like a more conventional Regina Spektor, the song describes in passionate tones the story of a friend requesting that she mend her broken heart, only to be told by Hesketh that "I just don't have the technology". The track has the pleasing effect of engendering the listener with the thought that, should she wish, there is another direction Little Boots could successfully explore. For now though it seems she's content to plunder what could be a rich mine of electropop tunes.