The decade since Britpop's demise has witnessed a decline in the school of very British, observational pop, as crafted by the likes of Pulp and Blur. Welsh art-rockers the Hot Puppies appear ready - and able - to reverse this trend.

A riot of sartorial styles and influences, the Puppies write propulsive pop songs shot through with elegantly off-kilter lyrics. Their visual focal point is singer Bec Newman who, clad in a pinafore and sensible pearls, suggests Siouxsie Sioux trapped inside the body of an Aberystwyth librarian.

Their debut album Under the Crooked Moon is packed with absurdist, articulate kitchen-sink vignettes of everyday life. Even in tonight's sweatbox, Newman is adept at affecting a little-girl-lost disingenuousness that lends a vulnerability to their cleverly camp, enjoyably overwrought repertoire.

Keyboards and theremin give their attitudinal indie rock an eccentrically sinister air, like Yeah Yeah Yeahs given a hearty rogering by Sparks. Terry is a stand-out track, Newman adopting the aloofness of PJ Harvey to croon quirkily disturbing words of a predatory suitor with no good on his mind and "blood and Campari" on his hands.

New track After the Beheading has the bleak humour of This Is Hardcore-era Pulp, while Newman drawls the seductive Green Eyeliner with a coquettish élan worthy of Debbie Harry.

They close with single The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful, a song about risqué obsession couched in the form of a letter to Observer agony aunt Mariella Frostrup. The Hot Puppies may be precedented but, right now, they sound like nobody else.

· At the Electric Gardens Festival, Kent, on Sunday. Box office: 0871 230 9848. Then touring.