Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
There are plenty of female singers with interesting and unusual voices, but I can’t think of even one current artist who sounds like Betsy. Her strong, deep voice instantly makes each of her songs distinctive and recognisable. The Welsh 24-year-old featured on Endless Love, a solo single by Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, back in 2014, and got herself signed to Warner Bros. When she released Fair in February this year, she got the music blogs abuzz. I wasn’t quite sold, but the catchy follow-up single Lost and Found caught my interest. I had pigeonholed her as a cool act so I was surprised she’d gone pop so quickly – in fact, Lost and Found has taken her all the way from 6 Music to Radio 2 in one fell swoop. There’s a lot of music around these days that’s inspired by the 90s, but Lost and Found takes inspiration from an area no-one’s pilfered from yet – that strange place where dance music met mum music. Once you notice how much it sounds like M People, you’ll never be able to hear this song again without thinking of Heather Small. Sorry!