Emerging from an incongruous Belfast music scene, Girls Names formed in January 2009 with their first gig booked before the duo had even played together. Out of step with their surroundings, but finding peers across both sides of the water, Girls Names unabashedly hark back to the early/mid eighties shadow world of Black Tambourine, Felt and the Sound of Young Scotland.

The sound of outlying indiepop sitting just off-centre, Girls Names are a Postcard from the margins, just as indiepop should be, and once was. Not wilfully nostalgic, Girls Names instead effortlessly channel that same outsider spirit that defined K Records, Slumberland and everyone else that didn’t care if the world listened.

In their short existence they’ve quickly streamlined their sound, forging their own self-styled “disposable noise pop”. Perhaps most intriguingly, masked under the gloom and fuzz are subdued bittersweet vocals and melodic hooks, aching with the concerns of all of youth – love, death, escapism: there’s not much else worth singing about.

Monday 24th May marks the release of You Should Know By Now, their 8-track mini-album on Tough Love.