Hence, the band began as a hobby, a weekly meet-up of mates now in their early 20s who still loved making music, but only for fun. Which is important to know because it’s key to understanding their sound. It’s why their songs are so joyous and their lyrics life-affirming. It’s why their trumpets are triumphant and their strings soar. It’s why their all-inclusive choruses demand to be sung back, why festival audiences adore them and why their singles have been synced everywhere from Sky Movies, a Masterchef final and the BBC’s Olympics coverage to a cider advert and a daytime TV gardening show they’d rather not discuss. It’s why, whether you know it or not, you’ve heard their music.

“The biggest difference with this band and the ones we were in before,” explains singer James Kellegher “is that we’re making music that makes us happy. We write songs that we enjoy singing and playing. It’s the sort of pop music we like listening to.”

If that sounds odd, bear in mind that all five were in their early teens when they formed their first bands. By the time they left school, James and keyboardist Callie Noakes were taking their grunge group seriously. Guitarist Martin Dukelow, bassist Chris Brand and drummer Paul Jackson were in a screamo outfit they truly believed would make them millionaires. In retrospect, that neither was successful doesn’t surprise them.

“We were terrible,” laughs Martin. ““All we cared about were guitar riffs and sounding loud. But we were young. It was fun…. for a while.”

Having packed away their pop dreams, they got jobs - or, in Callie’s case, went to college. James ran a recording studio in a school, Martin and Chris worked on building sites. Paul, rumour has it, became a bingo caller. But all five soon got bored of not being in bands. Fortuitously, over summer 2011, they bumped into each other enough times to suggest they meet up to make music.

They never once sat down to decide on their sound – a mix of indie and folk, shimmering guitars, big drums and brass. There was no master plan. Their strange name sums up their lack of commercial intentions. Eliza and the Bear comes from a collection of poems by Eleanor Rees. Had they known how many times they’d be asked which of the band is Eliza, they’d have chosen something simpler.

The first song they wrote was a folksy tune called Trees, which they posted on Facebook to show their friends what they’d been up to in their spare time. When they were immediately contacted by a label, they laughed.

“It was a small label that asked us to send them more songs,” recalls James. “We told them we didn’t have any.”

Still for fun, they kept writing and posting the results on Facebook. Their rockier second song, the jubilant, horns-soaked Brother’s Boat, was picked up by blogs, raved about and passed around. Ditto the glorious It Gets Cold, which would later make its way to Masterchef and the Sochi Olympics.

The anthemic Friends became a fan favourite and went on to soundtrack a Bulmers cider advert. Whatever the band posted, lots of people loved. Management companies began getting in touch. Still they hadn’t played a single gig.

In 2012, it finally dawned on Eliza and the Bear that they had become a real band. They rehearsed twice a week, after work, in a grotty room in Essex. They booked their first gig, at London’s Bull & Gate.

“It was awful,” laughs James. “I’d spent years in a grunge band with my guitar slung low, trying to look mean. I hadn’t even considered how I should move on stage to pop songs.”

A few gigs later they got in to their groove. They supported Athlete on tour and that autumn played a Communion show in London that saw them tipped as Ones To Watch. In spring 2013, they played to 4000 people in 24 hours, supporting Little Comets at Shepherds Bush Empire and Imagine Dragons the following night at The Forum.

“Our previous biggest audience was 100 people,” says Martin. “It was proper scary, chucked-in-at-the deep-end stuff. But we loved it. It’s what every band wants – to walk out on stage to see thousands of faces. At the time, we thought we’d made it, but six months later, we still had our day jobs.”

A summer of ecstatically received festival slots and a six-date arena tour supporting Paramore, at which audiences sang back their songs, led to a flurry of major label offers. Eliza and the Bear saw out the year with a headline tour and a deal signed with Capitol Records.

Their lives since have been a flurry of writing, recording, playing to ever increasing live audiences and releasing EPs, including last summer’s Light It Up and the recent Make It On My Own. The latter’s euphoric lead single, on ode to self-determination, was written just days before Eliza and the Bear decamped to Nashville for seven weeks to work with three times Grammy Award-winning producer Jacquire King (Kings Of Leon, Of Monsters and Men, James Bay) on their eponymously-titled, debut album, due out early next year.

“We wanted to get out of London, get away from distractions and concentrate on making the songs as good as they could be,” says James. “Jacquire brought in a string quartet, a gospel choir and a couple of brilliant brass players.”

“We went with this clichéd preconception of what Nashville would be like – and we were right,” laughs Martin. “Every bar has a band playing, the men wear cowboy hats and boots and take the piss out of people like me wearing skinny jeans. We loved it!”

Among the songs recorded are a couple that may surprise the band’s longtime fans – the beautifully broody, strings accompanied I’m On Your Side and the stripped-back, piano-driven My Body Was Against Me.

“I’m On Your Side is a completely different sound for us,” says James. “Because we’re known for upbeat, happy songs, we decided to write the opposite – a slow song that’s quite dark and angry. The lyrics are about an ex of mine who was playing the field and I found out about it. It’s not all negative though. I’m saying I understand why she did it, which I think is pretty decent of me!"

“It’s a strange song because halfway through, when the strings come in, it totally changes. That’s not something we’d normally do, but Jacquire encouraged us. It’s one of his favourites on the album.”

Included, of course, are fan favourites that have long been part of the band’s live set, among them Brother’s Boat, album opener Friends and Upon The North, a song inspired by a spooky drive.

“I was driving home on my own on the motorway one night and when I got to the turning I wanted, I almost didn’t take it,” says James. “I suddenly wondered what would happen if I just kept driving. What if I went missing? Who would miss me? I have no idea why my mind fixated on that because I’ve never had the urge to go missing.”

Cruel and I’m On Your Side feature a gospel choir, while sumptuous strings have been added to several of those older songs. Lion’s Heart, a future single and surefire festival anthem, has been sped up from its original recording and made rockier. The uplifting song, about self-belief, James wrote for his sister, but it’s also a motto for a band that began when they thought their dreams were over, only to discover that they had what it takes to achieve them.

For one thing, they only began as a band when their sonic experiments in improvising three-minute pop songs - verses and choruses, yes, melody and arrangements, no - exploded into something deeper and darker.

They’re as comfortable discussing Guy Debord and Arthur Schopenhauer as they are John Coltrane and Black Sabbath. Their Twitter feed thrums with hymns to Mei Leaf tea and conscientious vegan messaging alongside plugs for Notorious B.I.G. and tributes to legendary jazz-funk drummer Alphonse Mouzon.

Will Ritson (vocals, lyrics) is a visual artist, writer and poet and has his own book publishing company. Multi-instrumentalist Matt Ritson (keys) is a stellar photographer. Jonny Tams (bass) spent his teens fiddling with broken synths before going on to work with producers like Spike Stent and Stephen Street, as well as artists including Björk and Russell Haswell. Kai Akinde-Hummel (drums) is fluent in three languages, and his grandfather was part of Nigerian trumpeter Dr Victor Olaiya’s band, the same one Fela Kuti played with. Sash Lewis (synths) has patched modular synths with the likes of Four Tet, Caribou and Floating Points, and has, as they say, “a history…”

As Formation, they make a noise that is the single most explosive and joyously angry thing you’ll hear for a long time. So that’s numerous remarkable things already and we haven’t even mentioned Yes or the Wu-Tang Clan yet.

Brothers Will and Matt grew up in a South West London household where one parent loved Northern Soul, disco and funk while the other loved choral music, opera and Queen. For seven years, Will and Matt sang in church choirs four times a week – church being a venue they appreciated more for its acoustics than its message.

In his youth, Jonny worked in a record store in Wimbledon, recommending classic albums that would inspire the brothers. Later the three would work in a warehouse together, sucking down every great record they could squeeze onto the shared iPod, quietly brewing the first Formation EPs.

Meanwhile, Kai shared the brothers’ orchestral upbringing, playing with orchestras and jazz bands, sporadically working on projects with Matt, until he was drafted into the band while still living in Spain. Sash was sharing studio space with Jonny and joined the live set-up to “tune” the synths before a more serious involvement with the band was born.

A local scheme - the Merton Music Foundation - allowed the brothers to rent affordable instruments and so drums, clarinets and saxophones entered the house at an early age. Up in Camden, Kai was already playing in - and touring Europe with - orchestras and jazz bands.

“Playing in orchestras and in churches opened us up to so much more music,” Kai nods. “It was those places that taught us how to communicate.”

Others took a less conventional approach. Jonny, whose young mind was being blown by early music software, would record things falling over until he’d perfected the art. Meanwhile Sash would sit around in his mate Kieran Hebden’s bedroom, discovering samplers and drum loops as “pure magic” unfolded.

In their early teens, the boys soaked up Pink Floyd, Free, Yes and Jimi Hendrix. And it’s here we meet the very heart of Formation: on the left; groove, on the right, power; and in the centre, know-how. And while metal helped shaped them as teenagers, you’ll not hear that influence on Look at The Powerful People as the record doesn’t feature a single guitar. What you will hear is the bass as lead, percussion as lead, drums as lead, vocals as lead, the groove as lead – everything where it’s needed.

And now there’s an album - named after Gino Vanelli’s 1974 pop-soul masterpiece. Co-produced by the fast-rising Adele and The Strokes engineer Ben Baptie and genre-defining house producer and DJ Leon Vynehall, Look At The Powerful People shares the same redefining air that lit-up Andrew Weatherall’s work on Screamadelica. And while Look at The Powerful People might appear to be flashing its arse at Trump and May, it’s about flipping that drive around to create a gang with an inner power.

“People have a collective power,” Kai says. “We’ve always been on the fringes. We’re misfits, never a member of any scene. So we’ve built our own gang and if people want to join us they can.”

Take “Back Then,” a euphoric ball of heat and fire, bejewelled by Jonny’s production skills, bouncing on a thick Motown-like groove. It skirts time-wasting nostalgia but still thrills to the memories of being care-free enough to spend weeks building skate-ramps and stealing trolleys. “Buy and Sell” is sheer aggression, a fantastically nasty, jagged piece of commentary tackling consumerism and advertising.

“Drugs” pulses wildly, it’s not an anti-intoxicant song as such, more of a be-aware-of-what-you’re-doing song. Elsewhere, “A Friend” is a lunatic pop blast, like a psychedelic Killers stripped of their showbiz glitter and jacked up on cheap coffee and cigarettes.

If any song were to sum this brilliant group up it would be “On The Board”. It’s actually about chess, which puts it in a small group with “Your Move” by Yes and the Wu-Tang’s “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’”.

“Us, Yes and Wu-Tang,” smiles Will. “That’s the magic pyramid of Formation! The first five Yes albums and the first three Wu Tang albums - I could throw everything else away. It doesn’t get more ‘us’ than “On The Board”. I wanted to make a tune someone else might sample - and this might be the one…”

Formation are something else. Something real. Something you can trust. They bleed Stax and Curtis Mayfield, Pantera and Sly Stone, Gil Scott Heron and Vaughan Williams. They’re built on the bones of visionary musicians and the desire to connect that’s within us all. Look at The Powerful People is “a diverse record from diverse people for a diverse crowd,” Matt says, summing it up to perfection. 2017 just got a whole lot brighter.

'Y Dydd Olaf' has gained critical acclaim across the board, it also won both the Welsh Music Prize 2015 and Welsh Album of the Year at the National Eisteddfod in Meifod in 2015. Gwenno is a native Welsh and Cornish speaker and it’s this along with co-producing and co-hosting Welsh language show Cam O’r Tywyllwch (A Step Away From The Darkness) with Peski for Radio Cardiff and more recently, Resonance FM, that has led her to create music that translates her internationalist influences into layered, home-fi keyboard sounds wrapped in echoed vocals and musique concrète-inspired beats.

When they first met during an idle lunchtime at school, one of them vigorously beat the other with a piece of wood. Fortunately, after much crying, sighing and some lengthy spells in detention, they decided to bury the hatchet and become best buds. It's not every day that two sensual souls of such rare groove and voracious passion collide in the cosmos, and so, Hot Soles were born.

Their live shows are so high octane that you should probably consider bringing protective headgear and breathing apparatus if you're of a nervous disposition. Their achievements include an incredible transatlantic jamming session with the legendary Duane Eddy on BBC Radio 5, performing to 20,000 people in Sheffield City Centre, European tours encompassing overseas festivals and countless local media and radio appearances. Along with these delights they've also had the pleasure of playing alongside a plethora of well-known artists including Franz Ferdinand, Vampire Weekend, Deap Valley, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Sleafod Mods, The 1975 and Dr Feelgood - to name just a few!

"In the not-entirely-crowded field of post-Black Keys blues-rock duos you might want to listen to, the Hot Soles deserve kudos for sounding like Solomon Burke fronting a 60s power trio (without the bassist, naturally)" - The Guardian

"Hot Soles take everything that is brilliant about rock and roll, condense it, then tell it to 'stop fucking messing about'. The riffs come thick and fast and drums hit hard and true, and by the end of their 25 minutes in the spotlight every foot is tapping, every head is nodding and the applause is as rapturous as if they were headlining." - Watch The Band Not The Pit

"Hot Soles are the most exciting Rock 'n' Roll band I have ever had the pleasure of working with, and have a very addictive live performance energy, which we needed to capture in the right studio environment" - Steve Power (producer - Robbie Williams, Blur, Joe Cocker)

It's clear from building such a shimmering musical CV in such a short space of time that they have a mission. The mission is simple - to make a very loud noise filled with rare groove and ferocious gusto and liven up the musical landscape.

There are many duos, but there is only one Hot Soles.

Dashing through northern pastures unsaddled and un-blinkered Jane's journey so-far, from teenage Liverpudlian shoe-gazer to conceptual-pop mistress, has seen her graze with pocket-punk, Synth-pop, acid folk, indie-schmindie, dark-ambient drones, Hollywood soundtracks and girl-group psych.

Raised on the enthusiasm and inspiration of Factory records founder Rob Gretton and counting Doves and Elbow as her early backing bands Jane’s desire to cultivate and promote Manchester's lesser-documented Female musicians lead to her long-running Bird records imprint (releasing the earliest recordings of Cate Le Bon, Beth Jeans Houghton and Maxine Peake) housed in the anti-office of Andy Votel’s Twisted Nerve label.

Having recorded 6 critically acclaimed self-penned solo albums Jane has also written and recorded with a wide range of multi-disciplined artists featuring pioneering ‘lost’ musicians (Wendy & Bonnie, Suzanne Ciani, Cybotron and Suzanne Christie) as well as non-conformists (Demdike Stare, Dave Tyack and The Focus Group) and high-profile friends and supporters (David Holmes, Damon Gough, Dave Brock).

Jane’s lesser known creative endeavours have seen her contribute sound-installation projects to labels via Manchester's Boomkat experimental imprint, various international theatrical institutes as a film re-composer, as a compiler for Finders Keepers records, and as an author of children’s books based on her visual collaborations with Klunkclick (Yo Gabba Gabba / Bobby Conn).

Meanwhile her presence as a live performer has been requested by the likes of Jarvis Cocker, Guy Garvey (Meltdown), Laetitia Sadier, Richard Hawley, Josephine Foster and Gruff Rhys and has flexed her knowledge in the DJ booth as a one-time member of Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures DJ team. Jane’s music has appeared in fashion campaigns for Chanel and Chloe plus a wide-range of TV and Cinematic productions such as the soundtrack to ‘Kiss Of The Damned’ directed by John Cassevetes daughter Xan. Jane’s voice was also sampled by the band Coldplay, on the track ‘Another’s Arms’.

Jane’s last album ‘The Silver Globe’ was, in Jane’s own opinion, her most complete and realised commitment to vinyl to date and was released via her own Bird Records imprint in late 2014 garnering the instant accolade on Piccadilly Records Album Of The Year a notion shared with many music fans and blogs. Gilles Peterson gave the first single ‘Don't Take My Soul’ a Top Ten place in his best tracks of the year adding to the unanimous support of radio DJs like Jarvis Cocker, Marc Riley, Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne and Mary Anne Hobbs. Early DJ mix encouragement has also come from the likes of Andrew Weatherall and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve. Having debuted songs to a proud list of sold-out headline gigs, and as a key artist at last years Festival Number 6, beneath the rays of The Silver Globe anything is possible.

2017 will see the release of new music, yet to be announced, with a busy live schedule expected later in the year through 2018.

From 2003 - 2008 she was the lead singer in Sheffield alt pop band The Long Blondes. The Long Blondes signed to Rough Trade Records in 2006 releasing 2 studio albums, 'Someone To Drive You Home' in October 2006 and "Couples" in April 2008. The band released a compilation of early singles on Angular Records in Oct 2008 entitled "Singles".

In 2009 Kate started working with ex Suede guitarist and producer Bernard Butler, releasing a double A sided single, 'Wonder Feeling'/'The Atlantic' in 2011. A mysterious album of work from the duo is complete and rumoured to be released in the not too distant future. Kate played live in 2011 and 2012 with Kate Jackson Group, British Electric Foundation and Heaven 17. In 2013 B.E.F released their third album "Dark" featuring Kate Jackson singing a cover of Blondie's 'Picture This'.

Kate is also a painter and printmaker. Working from a studio at The Rehearsal Rooms in Bury St Edmunds, she creates large scale acrylic paintings based on brutalist architecture and walks taken in the British urban, suburban and rural Suffolk landscape.

In October 2014 Kate formed new band Kate Jackson and The Wrong Moves.

She DJs regularly and established The Hoo Ha Record Club with Ken Last in January 2015 and released her debut solo album 'British Road Movies' in May 2016.

Starting out as an antidote to the problem of being unable to adequately express themselves in conversation, the group formed when brothers Robert and Michael chanced upon Matthew in the corner of a crowded room. Quickly eschewing the established methods of relentless gigging and label baiting, Little Comets chose instead to perform in the furtive surroundings of front rooms, trains, trams and university lecture halls – creating small pockets of rapt listeners who would return to see the band in more established concert venues.

“We had an idea of playing only to captive audiences,” says Robert. “People were forced to engage with our music in such a close environment, and it taught us a great deal about the measure of a song - how it could attach itself to a person that stands only an inch away. We’d play on any type of transport, during college classes or even in someone’s kitchen. If nothing else it allowed us to meet many different people in different cities – we’d often find that when we revisited these places we had a little community of recognisable faces that were already familiar with us.”

First single, One Night In October, came out in early 2010, bolstered by support from BBC Radio 1, and self-produced debut album, In Search of Elusive Little Comets, followed in February of 2011 fizzling with an air of ease and nonchalance. Venturing briefly into the States for SXSW, the band spent much of the following year touring before heading back to begin the process of making a second album.

With Michael once again expansively attached to production, Life is Elsewhere draws on a deeper musical alphabet than previous work, melding the quiet influence of “incidents, accidents, hints and allegations” with the more sleeve-worthy motions of Fleetwood Mac, Milan Kundera, Jonathan Safran Foer and Tracy Chapman.

“We wanted to make an album that was far more relevant to ourselves especially in a lyrical sense,” Rob says. “Serving the song with space and confidence was also an important consideration. Listening to classic albums really opened up our ears to the avoidance of diluting emotion with too many sounds – hopefully this album is a step in the right direction.”

Released during 2012 on UK label Dirty Hit, home of such luminaries as Benjamin Francis Leftwich and The 1975, Life is Elsewhere staunchly demonstrates the ability of Little Comets to blend vernacular and content - pairing propulsive beats with layered melodies in the vein of a more sedate Talking Heads or less conspicuous Vampire Weekend . The disc’s buoyant opener, A Little Opus, laments the shackles of old institutions in British society, whilst Violence Out Tonight, a portrait of sexual assault, trundles along deceptively encased in a chilling lyric (“she stalks the stolid streets debased, the ragged gape of alienation wipes the grief across her face… all this protracted by a state in which the poor conviction rate for rape can often leave a woman feeling more at blame than able”). Meanwhile, Jennifer is a whimsical description of an uncommunicative relationship, which steadfastly refuses to swerve from a chorus that encapsulates summer in musical form.

For Little Comets however, the album’s defining track is In Blue Music We Trust a personal addendum that thematically explores impending fatherhood and the simplistic beauty of familial attachment (“I see the kicks beneath her skin, elucidates my own being…”).

“This song used to be full of robust mistrust – an outpouring against everything we saw as vacuous,” Rob says. “We were propelled by disbelief and anger when playing it live. But the more we hear it, the more it becomes a song of positivity for us. We’re all people who are in stable relationships with babies and homes – we are exactly where we want to be. The fact we are fortunate enough to be able to express this in musical form is a beautiful thing.”

When October Drift appeared at the start of 2015 with their beefy yet melodic sound, they had the confidence to win over all audiences.

Despite the early success of their incendiary debut singles – receiving support from Steve Lamacq, John Kennedy and Q magazine to name but a few - and string of sold-out gigs, this band still remain something of an enigma.

October Drift’s music is similarly ambiguous, characterised by their signature wall of sound guitars, soaring, ponderous vocals and driving, urgent drums.

And while staying independent and playing every town and city that will have you isn’t exactly the stylish thing to do in 2016, October Drift’s irresistible combination of feedback and harmonies deserves to shake every room in the country.

The band have gained a reputation for delivering blistering, high-energy live shows. Indeed, their first tour sold out before even releasing their first single, such is the buzz around their live performances.

With shows at BBC6 Music Festival, Dot to Dot, Tramlines and Camden Rocks already under their belts alongside a cult fan base spreading the word, and a focus too few peers in their position possess, the immediate future is very bright (and very loud).

‘Brooding, personally-etched song writing’ – Clash

“A distinct lack of social media presence made sure early cuts were shrouded in a sense of mystique, serving only to heighten the growing buzz” - Line of Best Fit

‘A band we’re probably all going to know about very soon’ – Louder Than War

Made up of multi instrumentalists J Willgoose, Esq. and Wrigglesworth, the duo released their second album, The Race For Space, in February 2015 with two special shows at the National Space Centre. The album went on to chart at #11 in the UK and spent a further 5 weeks in the Top 40. The band embarked on a global tour, including a sold-out UK tour finishing at The Roundhouse in London.

After two years up in the stratosphere with the hugely successful ‘The Race For Space’, Public Service Broadcasting are returning to earth. J. Willgoose, Esq., now has an established reputation for weaving forensic, historical research into evocative storytelling. This time he is taking us on a journey down the mineshafts of the South Wales valleys and using the history of coal mining to shine a light on the disenfranchised.

The band’s first release through independent label Play It Again Sam, ‘Every Valley’ examines the history of coal mining in South Wales. It is a record about community and what happens to an area when its lifeblood is ripped from it and as much as anything, it is a metaphor for a much larger, global and social malaise.

J. Willgoose, Esq., explains: “I have no personal ties to mining, be it coal or otherwise, and I have no family links to the area, but something about the story drew me in. Perhaps the romanticism of the valleys and their geography attracted me to South Wales in particular. You can’t always explain these things, as I’ve learned. What’s certain in my mind is that this album isn’t just about mining, and isn’t just about Wales. It’s a story reflected in abandoned and neglected communities across the western world, and one which has led to the resurgence of a particularly malignant, cynical and calculating brand of politics.”