5 Female Artists To Watch Out For

2. Alex Winston

To look at Alex Winston's inspirations, you'd perhaps get the wrong impression of what her sound could be like. Having covered songs by Jack Penate, The Rolling Stones, The Ramones and Mumford & Sons, not to mention opening for Chuck Berry, a rock/indie chanteuse might be the image in mind which would seem fairly close listening to her early independant label EPs. However, Alex is a girl of contrast and contradictions and her musical training is originally in opera and classical music.

So what is her most current release King Con actually like then? Well, at first you might be a little confused and maybe even put off by the high pitched, girly vocals and sugar sweet melodies but delve a little deeper and it's a bizarre concoction of pop's best hooks & production and indie lyrical barmy-ness stuffed with double meanings and spiky curse word insults. Standouts include: Velvet Elvis (essentially a song about masturbation over inanimate objects hidden behind a shroud of xylophone plinks and 60's girlgroup backing vocals), Sister Wife (discussing the woes of polygamous marriages via a string backed and industrial clash groove of which the video features a blood vomiting cat-puppet), Medicine (featuring chinese and japanese inspired instrumentation and doo-wop shoos and woops whilst asking you to 'sell your house, sell your kids, don't settle for less') and the Lykke Li-meets-Kate Bush-ness of Guts. The single Choice Notes has already featured in advertisements for TK Maxx and the Hyundai ix20 so you've probably already had one her songs stuck in your head - just be prepared to have a few more there after you give her a listen.