The Stills: Lola Stars And Stripes

2004 is the year Indie well and truly returns. It’ll stalk you, then walk around your house with its dizzying melodies and harmonize-thee-to-sleep hummings, tossed lazily towards your bedroom, smothered in lines like "comets swarm like fireflies/outside your window". You won't quite be able to work out where it came from, but it'll be there alright.

The Stills are from Montreal. Their debut album ’Logic Will Break Your Heart’ puts touring partner Ryan Adams’ latest efforts to even more shame. The vocals recount some of Morrissey’s early steps but all too quickly wander off that beaten track into fairytale fields topped with purple mist and encased in bright summer sunshine. It's so picture perfect.

You can try your damnedest to ignore the fact Indie is Back. You can shove your head under that pillow, but it won't help. Once this is in your world, it'll niggle at you and refuse to stop fluttering inside your head until you play it again. And fear-upon-fears, there're plenty more of these shiny-fringed boys blowing in the breeze on yonder horizon... The children of the Korn, these are not. Rejoice.