Who the hell are?

Cut Copy

Cut above: The first thing you notice about Aussie Dan Whitford is his height. The MOR obsessive from Melbourne towers above his bandmates and so far above his sampler he has to squat down on his hunkers to adjust the dials. Which is a good thing, because when his sampler blew up on stage during an early gig, his head was already well clear of the blast range. Whitford is the leader of Cut Copy, a dance/indie act in the mould of LCD Soundsystem and Soulwax, who have just released their new single, Future, a fine slice of electropop that reveals Dan's fetish for FM radio acts from the 1970s such as Fleetwood Mac and ELO, and showcases his vast expertise in 1980s studio technology. Give this guy a clapped out old synth, and he can tease a modern retro-dance classic out of it in no time.

Cutting crew: Cut Copy began as a solo project, but now features a full-on garage rock band along with beats, samples and scratches. Initially, Dan was doing it all himself, armed with a sampler and a collection of hip-hop instrumentals. Early demos were cut in his bedroom. Dan was all set to go it alone, until his sampler blew up onstage, leaving him without any musical backing. He recruited a few of his mates to form a garage band and give him some support. They were a motley crew indeed: guitarist Tim is a coffee- guzzling Sonic Youth fan; drummer Mitchell Scott is a keen ornithologist and entymologist; and bassist Bennett is more at home in the library than the rehearsal room. He eventually left the band to pursue a PhD, but not before they'd completed their debut album, Bright Like Neon Love.

Paris Hilton: Dan's quest for a producer took him from Melbourne to Paris. His quarry was Parisian house maestro Philippe Zdar, one half of Cassius and Motorbass, who has twiddled the knobs for French band Phoenix. Zdar helped Dan achieve just the right blend of retro chic and futuristic cool. Cut Copy signed to Modular Records, home of such cred dance-indie acts as Avalanches and Bumblebeez. The single Saturday earned them comparisons with Prince, Homework- era Daft Punk, and Isle of Skye beatmaster Mylo. Cut Copy toured the UK with Mylo in May and made their Glastonbury debut last month. They also did gigs in NY, LA, Miami and the SxSW festival in Austin, Texas. When the album was launched in London, it got the thumbs-up from DJ magazine, the Guardian, NME, Zoo and Drowned in Sound.

Guitar neck: According to their official biog, listening to Cut Copy is "like rediscovering lost memories and hearing the sound of the future, both at the same time, making you want to grow a discoball for a head and electric guitars for arms."