When Jim Morrison sang of an "unhappy girl... locked in the prison of her own device", he could have been prophesying Broadcast's Trish Keenan, clad in shapeless clothing, eyes firmly closed. Possibly the last time a singer was so lost in their own reverie it was the Lizard King himself.

Keenan's voice seems to attack out of the darkness like some warning siren. She has the abandonment of Janis Joplin added to Nico's Teutonic stridency; I'm most reminded of Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick, dreamy and jagged.

If Keenan's voice was all that was good about Broadcast, they'd still leave many bands standing, but there's much more. While their spiky pop songs and organ-frazzled soundscapes reek of Haight Ashbury, 1968, their synthesisers give them a modern, urban feel. Their music taps into the division between fantasy and reality and, more acutely, into the eerie abyss of childhood where right and wrong are not yet entirely separate. Their songs have both the innocence and darkness of nursery rhymes and playground chants.

When Keenan sings, something truly haunted comes out. Lines like "My room's too small for parties, so spacious when you're lonely" are so powerful they follow you home. When Geri Halliwell can become a superstar there's something deeply wrong with the world, but if it can produce bands like this I'm all for it.

• On tour and at Dingwalls, London NW1 (0171-267 1577), on Wednesday.