BIOGRAPHY BY TIM CHESTER - NME

There’s a new sound in our musical landscape. It comes from Hebden Bridge and it’s called Other Other Pop. It’s the noise your MySpace page makes when you define yourself by what you aren’t. It’s what happens when you sing pop songs through a telephone receiver. It’s the sound of 19-year-old Jonjo Feather.

Perhaps we should explain. Jonjo is a pop star, a songwriter, a creative multi-instrumentalist genius who plays all the instruments on his recordings. But Jonjo is a bit different. In an era where insipid, populist melodies ooze from every available airwave, he crafts timeless songs but infuses them with a sense of the unusual. Working from a barn in Yorkshire, Jonjo solders microphone wires into old telephone cradles and writes songs with his guitar purposely out of tune in a quest for something other than the norm.

These unusual proclivities started at an early age, when he had an epiphany and decided to ditch tuition. “Lessons got a bit of a drag,” he says, “all that boring scales malarky. I got into My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth and realised that it wasn’t about music theory but making noise that you’re happy with.”

It’s an Otherworldly noise with a universal core (“pop that’s a bit more challenging”), that owes a debt to a huge variety of places, from The Beatles to Beck, anti-folk to the films of David Lynch. “I love the atmospheric spookiness of his films. I was watching ‘Lost Highway’, and there’s this constant buzz going through that creates atmosphere.”

Spookiness abounds in Jonjo’s own work. New single ‘I Suppose’ is a dark reminiscence of furtive nights in Vienna, at once unnerving and as beautiful as the city after which its written. It’s earned him comparisons to a diverse range of artists from the two Elvis’ to Eels, although he also loves true pop. “I prefer Rihanna and Rachel Stevens to Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight – that’s proper pop” Jonjo says defiantly.

Jonjo found a manager easily and played a string of gigs in Yorkshire, before realising he needed a drummer. “I tried drum machines, but I’m not good with the technical side of things” he insists. After countless hopefuls auditioned, he finally struck gold with Joe Love.

Before the duo knew it they were invited to play the Winter Anti-Folk Festival in New York’s Greenwich Village, where Regina Spektor and Adam Green got their big breaks. Meanwhile a label dogfight was raging to sign Jonjo; he eventually chose northern indie label Dead Young over offers from several other keen majors. “They give me a lot of freedom and let me carry on what I’m doing - they really dig it”.

As soon as the plane tyres screeched to a halt back in England Jonjo was invited to play in Paris, where his rehearsed French banter was rewarded by a rapt audience. “They really pay attention out there, it’s quite nervewracking” he admits. “In England you play and people are yapping. I guess it’s because there’s no stars here anymore, there’s no John Lennons or Bob Dylans – there's a lot of mediocrity.”

Unique songwriters that subvert the perceived rules while maintaining control of a bucket of perfect melodies? Perhaps Jonjo should look in the mirror before making such assertions, there’s a star in ascendancy very close to home.