Previously throwing up next big things from La Roux to Hurts, the biannual NME Radar Tour is a reliable barometer of the health of rising pop. However, this year, with few new acts breaking and record companies trying every trick short of glueing feathers on their bands to get them off the ground in recessionary Britain, this usually hot-ticket tour is struggling in small venues. Which is a shame, because you can see a genuinely exciting band. From Sweden, Niki and the Dove feature neither a Niki or a white bird. Instead, Björk-ish frontwoman Malin Dahlström bounces about in an outfit that looks as if it were thrown together in a smash 'n' grab raid on Oxfam, while the threesome's music similarly hurls together percussion, electro, goth and pop. It's dramatic and headrushing, and songs as great as DJ Ease My Mind give them every chance of success.

London's S.C.U.M. have recently released a fine debut album, Again Into Eyes, but struggle to replicate it. Another of those dark, intense young bands pop has been throwing up from Modern English to the Horrors, besuited frontman Thomas Cohen (implausibly, a pretty-boy Nick Cave) is almost invisible in blackness and only the superb Whitechapel escapes an aural fog.

They'd do well to follow the example of headliners Wolf Gang. Only months ago, Max McElligott peered nervously from the stage. Now, with his dapper scarf, he looks and sings like a star. Their exuberant, Simple Minds-meets-Vampire Weekend pop increasingly rouses the audience into adoration. There are bigger mysteries than why the sublime Lions in Cages wasn't a massive hit, but maybe there's still time.