For the past couple of years, the 20-strong music factory known as Broken Social Scene has been Canada's wellspring of all things indie. Metric are one of its many offshoots but, by virtue of being fronted by the incandescent Emily Haines, they show more promise than some of their fellow artists.

As one of 2006's few female-led guitar bands, Metric have a handy selling point anyway, but Haines is more than the face of the group: it wouldn't function without her. Like Debbie Harry and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, her presence imparts an electric charge to a band that would otherwise consist of three generic indie boys. She has a visceral approach to the music, most of which is from the current album, Live It Out. In the space of one song, she'll quiver from head to foot, collapse on to her back and spring up like a pointer, all the while jabbing at two keyboards. Her bandmates, presumably having seen it all before, are impassive, but there's no contesting the impact of this tall, skinny hurricane.

Surprisingly, the voice driving things along isn't the Janis Joplinish foghorn you would expect, but a reedy shout that rightfully belongs to a petulant teenager. Not that this detracts in any way - she does wonders with what she's got. The inevitable caveat is that Metric have yet to find a unique sound, or at least one that isn't so in thrall to the early 1980s.

They only break away from the template during the encore: Monster Hospital, an anti-war polemic that has become their anthem, is a punk rave-up, and Dead Disco is free-form atonal experimentation. The latter goes on and on until everyone runs out of steam. Keep an eye on them, though, because Haines is a bit of a star.