Lucky Soul are on the up. Their name is in the air: people have heard it, but they don't know why. They gave the Hope and Anchor its biggest ever take for a single night - at a time they when they'd yet to release a record. A Thai DJ heard the name somewhere and after hearing their music flew them over to Bangkok for a single rooftop gig. That nebulous beast we call "the industry" heard the whispers and sent a large delegation to their appearance at In the City: they were singled out as a highlight. And Grace Jones, who caught them at Kilburn venue the Luminaire said they were really cool (how cool is that?). There's a heightening buzz, a sense that these five dapper Greenwich-based musicians will be very, very well known before 2006 is out.

But who are they? What do they do? Are they surfing the crest of some hipster krautrock revival? Are they ratcheting up the angular post-punk fad by (yet) another notch? Are they experimental folk, or jazz-metal? Do they do minimalist electronica, toytronica, punk rock, alt-core, lo-fi or mid-core? In a word: no. Actually, what Lucky Soul make is a kind of pop. Yes... pop. But pop, that is, in the original sense of the word, pop that means timeless, magic songs that are soaked in that strange musical version of deja vu that mixes the elusive sense of "haven't I heard this somewhere before?" with the tricksy ability to burgle memories of certain times and places, when life is sweetly bitter (or bitterly sweet). They're the soundtrack to a pointless crush, or what comforts you as you wave goodbye through the train window on the 14.36 from Stockport to Euston, or the thing that gives you the guts to go and ask someone you've never seen before for a phone number (then shrug and get on with life if coldly rebuffed).

Based in Greenwich, Lucky Soul are fronted by the beautiful Ali Howard whose voice, with its interplay of fragility and power, brings to mind Sandie Shaw, Dusty Springfield, Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval and the Ronettes' Veronica Bennett. But it is guitarist and songwriter Andrew Laidlaw's persistent faith in his art - and his ear for a direct, shimmering, irresistible melody - that is winning them a growing army of admirers (just take a look at www.myspace.com/luckysoullucky soul for proof of the proverbial pudding), the Raveonettes' Sune Rose Wagner amongst them.

In 2002, Andrew was based in Glasgow, working nights as a supervisor in a sound engineering college. When no-one else was around he'd use the space to develop what would become central to the timeless and starry-eyed Lucky Soul sound, staying up for days on end writing songs, perfecting them - or rejecting them. He started working with drummer Nathaniel Perkins (the pair had originally met at Liverpool's Liquidation clubnight while at Uni, "the only club for miles around where you could escape banging house and actually listen to some decent old sixties stuff"), got a new job (dishing out 99 Flakes at a family-run ice cream shop) and began what was to be a 2-year period of incubation, performing and rehearsing his compositions with a prototype of today's band.

"It's soul music by small town dreamers who don't pretend to come from the Deep South," he says. "Beautiful and self-effacing, bittersweet. Like romance, it seems superficial but runs deep. It doesn't try to be clever: your guts aren't clever."

It was towards the end of 2004 that Lucky Soul began to come together in its final form. Young guitarist Ivor Sims was recruited after Andy witnessed him cutting deftly through the middle-aged "hell" at a blues jam at the Spice of Life pub in Soho. Then, in a dramatic twist worthy of Lucky Soul: the Unofficial Biography, the original singer and bassist fell in love, had a child together and ran away. After four months of searching far and wide without success, a replacement bassist was found in the form of serial Brighton mod turned nurse Toby Fogell who, in the classic tradition of that-which-you-seek-being-righ t-under-your-nose, was the boyfriend of one of Andrew's friends. Meanwhile Ali Howard, who has since been described by the Virtual Festivals website as a "cross between some '50s film star and The Cardigans' Nina Persson" was discovered in the pop psychology department of a well-known bookshop and made a perfect fit as frontwoman shortly afterwards.

The rest of 2005 saw Lucky Soul swoop onto the live circuit to sparkling effect, rapidly gaining a reputation for immaculate, emotive performances that had the audience's hairs standing on end and, as the year moved on, singing along word for word.