New band of the week: Dream Wife (No 91)

Hometown: Brighton, London, Reykjavik.

The lineup: Rakel Mjöll (lead vocals), Alice Go (guitar, vocals), Bella Podpadec (bass, vocals).

The background: Dream Wife are named after a 1953 romantic comedy starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. It’s a movie from the golden age of Hollywood, the pre-countercultural era, with a surprisingly feminist bent. That notion of getting something more, or different, than what you expected appeals to the members of the band, who love the subversive quality of David Lynch’s work and estimated, probably rightly, that their name would at least be a conversation starter (see also: the Negro Problem).

They comprise three musicians, two British and one (singer Rakel Mjöll) Icelandic. Actually, “musician” does them a disservice: they’re artists, and music just happens to be the vehicle for their ideas right now. They were studying, variously, fine art and visual art at college in Brighton a year ago when they had the concept of forming a “fake girl band” as an art project for a gallery exhibition. So they wrote a few songs, recorded them, made a mockumentary inspired by Spinal Tap, and performed at the opening of the exhibition. It went so well, the fake/fantasy outfit became a reality. They started getting booked for gigs around England, even playing a festival, wrote some more songs, toured Canada and signed to Enfer Records.

They have an EP out in March, featuring four bursts of catchy grunge/garage mayhem. They cite as influences Debbie Harry (“She plays with the fantasy of the female image and is the perfect mythological pop icon”), Grimes (“A daring, modern pop artist”) and Kathleen Hanna (“Inspirational DIY queen”), and are particularly into the 1990s as a “thing”, especially referencing the Spice Girls and Sleater-Kinney. They’re not quite SG meets S-K, but you do get a sense of three sharp minds wittily dissecting pop culture, not dismissing it but channelling it for their slightly warped vision. For some reason they remind us of Cheap Trick – they’ve got a similar cartoon sensibility, with the attendant impression that they’re smirking as they go, simultaneously mocking and celebrating the medium they’re in.

Like the Trick, their chosen method of infiltrating the system is dumb three-chord guitar-pop. It has the energy and attack of 90s alt rock but also the gloss and sheen of late-70s/80s skinny-tie new wave. From the EP, Hey Heartbreaker is all handclaps and “Hey hey hey!”s, girl group gutter-angel cries and riffs that scythe. Everything takes a neat guitar motif and turns it into mainstream US power pop, although you can still just make out the Reykjavik beneath the roar: think Björk fronting the Bangles. Kids marries deceptively crude power chords to a Lynchian tale of driving to upstate New York in search of someone’s father’s grave and jumping in a lake. Lolita is dancier, with a heart of glass, and Believe (a previous single, not on the EP) is riot grrrl disco, equal parts Bikini Kill and Bananarama – Dream Wife call it “poolside pop with a bite”. Elsewhere, the band have recorded covers of Peaches’ Fuck the Pain Away and a little ditty entitled F.U.U. that finds our heroines repeatedly chanting “gonna fuck you up, gonna cut you up”, teasing out the nastiness, relishing the taste of the inflicted pain. If you want a vision of the future, imagine three female art students in stilettos, stamping on a human face – forever.

The buzz: “On a mission to bring a no-prisoners edge to showy, theatrical pop.”

The truth: There’s a riot (grrrl) going on.

Most likely to: Double dare ya.

Least likely to: Surrender.

What to buy: The self-titled EP will be released by Cannibal Hymns on 11 March.

File next to: Cheap Trick, Cars, Bikini Kill, Bananarama.

Links: dreamwife.co.

Ones to watch: Overcoats, Our Mother, Darq E Freaker, Habitats, Follin.