Tiny Dancers

You just know when something feels right. And from the first time Tiny Dancers rehearsed together in February 2005, they knew. 'In other bands, I never really felt that comfortable,' says their charismatic singer, David Kay. 'But this time something just clicked. It was the music I always wanted to make.'

'When we first started, we used to sit down and watch The Last Waltz,' adds lead guitarist Chris 'Ev' Etherington. 'And from start to finish in that film, every single member of The Band is singing their heart out. Sometimes you can't hear them, but that's not really the point. They were just totally absorbed in what they were doing. And that appealed to us massively, that idea of being in our own little club where it doesn't matter what anyone else might think.'

'Rehearsals quite often turn into spontaneous disco dance sessions,' adds keyboardist Glover, and if that leaves you confused as to exactly where Tiny Dancers fit in to the current pop spectrum, that's pretty much their point. They don't. 'From the start we felt we were doing something genuinely new, that we weren't trying to emulate anything else out there.'

Tiny Dancers are David Kay (vocals, acoustic guitar), Chris 'Ev' Etherington (lead guitar, keyboards), Dez Wathey (bass guitar), Duncan 'Zed' Morrison (drums) and Glover (keyboards, glockenspiel, percussion, guitar, noise creation). They all grew up in South Kirkby, South Elmsall and Brierley, three small former pit villages marooned in the West Yorkshire countryside between Doncaster and Wakefield. The kind of places where everyone knows everyone else and 'there's always a friendly face', they were at the very centre of the miner's strike – although only one of the band is old enough to have a vague memory of it.

The pit in South Kirkby closed in 1988, the one in South Elmsall five years later. There weren't many jobs in the area then, but the abandoned colliery buildings made great places for kids to play. 'It was all concrete and rubble – like The Warriors,' says David, explaining that whenever they grew tired of the countryside, they'd escape into movies.

'Growing up, Manchester was as distant as LA for us,' recalls Ev, while David talks of his first trip in to Leeds, at the age of 17. 'I was just amazed at the size of the buildings and stuff. It just seemed so big! I was all wide-eyed.'

Later, music provided another potent escape. In their isolation music from the USA seemed no more exotic than music made far closer to home, so they listened to a wide range from different eras and from both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, they point out, their villages often had more in common with hick towns in the mid-West than with the nearby music centres of Manchester or Leeds. 'It was quite depressed, yet still quite scenic,' says Ev. 'And although there was a lot for a kid to do, there was not so much for adults. After the pits closed, you got sawmills and warehouses coming in, woodworkers and stonemasons. So it was a bit like the old West.'

'We were always looking outwards,' adds David, explaining the playful, upbeat English eccentric attitude that Tiny Dancers would eventually develop. 'We weren't interested in social commentary.'

When they all began forming bands at the age of 12 or 13, the Miners Welfare Club provided them with a convenient venue for gigs. Later some of them got jobs away from home, the rest went to university, but music kept pulling them back. They played in various bands in various combinations, learning their craft. But it was when the five of them came together that it all finally made sense.

In those first days of rehearsing together, talking music and discussing influences, they were playing a lot of Beach Boys – 'We liked the unusual instrumentation, we knew from the start we didn't want to be a traditional rock band' – plus Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, The Beatles, the Stones, XTC, Talking Heads and Bowie.

'We're pilfering bastards with no roots!' jokes David, before going on to explain that what excited them was not so much the riffs but the attitude, the passion that they felt in those bands. 'I never really wanted to sound like anyone else. I never analysed records and fretted over them. It was more natural: I'd have a vague idea of a sound or a feeling and go for it. We're obviously influenced by certain bands and artists, but it's more about how they looked and what they did, not by any particular sounds or styles.'

The name is not taken from the Elton John song, but because it just felt right: playful, unassuming, but intimate too. 'We like the song, but it's not a tribute to Elton John or anything. It's just a happy coincidence. Tiny Dancers has got a good, positive feeling.'

Looking for somewhere new and unfamiliar to rehearse, for a fresh start after so many years of playing in other bands, they began using a space in Sheffield. Pretty soon the studio's manager was managing them too, and soon after that record company folk began arriving to hear them. They were signed almost immediately, not because they were a part of any scene, but because they so clearly weren't.

The bands they saw coming up around them seemed very monotone and limited, they say. 'There was very little going on amongst our peers. There was one sound, and then they were either very loud, or holding back a bit. And that was pretty much it.' Tiny Dancers' ambitions were more wide-screen Technicolor. Not just in terms of how they looked, but in the dynamics of the songs, the textures and the sounds, 'We wanted to be a bit more colourful.'

So what will you hear when you hear Tiny Dancers? You'll hear a distinctly English eccentric take on those strong 60s pop melodies with close harmonies, memorable guitar riffs, touches of country rock, of techno-funk raunch, of post-punk innovation. Most of all, you'll hear a band that fit into few established pigeonholes, that sound utterly themselves.

Live, you'll see a frontman who looks like some unholy mix of David Johansson, Beck and Bowie leading a stylish gang who swap instruments, laugh a lot and banter with each other and the crowd. You'll see decorative touches, standard lamps, flowers and stuffed toys. And lots of balloons and glitter. Decorating the stage, they say, is part of the fun, a way of making it feel like home. 'Although it does cause quite a lot of discomfort in the van.'

Like The Flaming Lips, Tiny Dancers are serious about their music, but intend to have fun playing it live. 'We love bands that push themselves, stretch themselves,' they say. 'We're always thinking of different ideas, things to play with.' They laugh, then Ev sums them up in a sentence. 'We're quite unpredictable.'