Sheffield's immaculately styled and wonderfully named The Long Blondes have made an impressive start to their fledgling career. Having forged a reputation as the hardest working unsigned band in showbiz, the five-piece signed to Rough Trade in April and now find themselves sitting on the most eagerly awaited debut album since, well, the Arctic Monkeys.

The band are eager to distance themselves from lazy comparisons to the Monkeys' My Space bothering teenage juggernaut, with singer Kate Jackson insisting it's purely coincidence that two critically hyped groups have emerged from Sheffield’s music scene in under a year.

"A few bands from Sheffield are doing well right now," she says. "But there's an age gap between us and the Arctic Monkeys, and our sound is pretty distinct." Indeed, the escapism fuelled 'Someone to Drive You Home' is at first listen a million miles from the gritty, kitchen-sink vignettes of 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I’m Not'. A swaggering, glam and gloriously pop record, The Long Blondes' debut is also fittingly literate for a band partly formed from ex-Sheffield university library staff.

"We want to write classic pop songs," explains the group's foppish guitarist Dorian Cox. "We're part of a lineage that started with Elvis and Dusty Springfield, and went through everything from 70s disco to Stock, Aitken and Waterman. We want to be as good at writing hit songs as Abba were."

This might sound like a new band's attempt at being fashionably arch and gaining some column inches in the process, yet 'Someone To Drive You Home' does go some of the way to fulfilling the group's manifesto of forming, they say, the "ultimate fantasy pop group: Nico, Nancy Sinatra, Diana Dors, Barbara Windsor." In fact, the real Long Blondes are all brunettes.

"We think it's subversive to write a really good pop song, when the story behind it is not necessarily particularly cheerful," says Cox, who co-writes the often rather introspective lyrics with Jackson. Early single 'Giddy Stratospheres' is a dancefloor friendly case in point, offering a barbed warning to an ex-lover's new girlfriend in a sugar-coated, hook-laden package. In this sense, a more accurate pointer to their influences would have to include those other Sheffield purveyors of seedy glamour, Pulp.

If it's hard to imagine Pete Waterman and co penning a hit with lyrics that make reference to Anna Karenina, as The Long Blondes do during 'Lust In The Movies', it's certainly less of a leap to imagine Jarvis Cocker doing the same. The group often appear keen to avoid naming obvious influences (their website features a list of who their influences definitely aren't, which includes both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles), yet it's surely significant that the album is produced by former Pulp bassist Steve Mackay.

The band must be hoping that Mackay has done a good job; being unsigned critical darlings has proved a poisoned chalice in the past, just ask Gay Dad. If the pressure of an incessant industry buzz and a precocious fan base that used to turn up at the band's places of work wasn't enough, winning the prestigious Philip Hall Radar gong at February's NME awards certainly confirmed the group as everyone’s one to watch - previous winners include Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs.

"We’re lucky to have had the attention," shrugs Cox. "I do believe we've got the quality and staying power to survive any backlash."

It's a testament not only to the group's joyful music and iconic looks that they’ve made it this far. Their speedy rise through the indie ranks since they formed in February 2003 has also been aided by typically Northern qualities of commitment, hard graft and tenacity. In between holding down full-time day jobs in surroundings as glamorous as Sheffield University, a Leeds art library, and the media studies department of a Rotherham college, the band managed to support Franz Ferdinand at a sold out Alexandra Palace, play New York and Sweden, and fit in the 340 mile round-trip to play regular London shows. It was left to sole driver Jackson to take the wheel of their humble tour bus.

Despite the twin pressures of their musical and working lives, the group resisted the temptation to sign the first deal that was thrust at them by the hordes of hungry A&R men circling in the Blondes' waters. "It was like leading a double life," says Jackson. "But it was important that we held out for the right deal. Not getting one straightaway was good for us. When Rough Trade came in for us we were ready."

"We didn't want to jump into anything headfirst," agrees Cox. "We had to make sure that we made the right decision. Complete artistic freedom was important to us. So was cash." Signing the deal has of course freed the band from the monotony of the nine-to-five grind, meaning an end to turning down gigs because of early starts and pulling sickies in order to play New York.

Now that The Long Blondes are full time musicians, looking the part isn't doing their marketability any harm. "We used to see each other walking around the city. We were already the coolest people in Sheffield, so we obviously had to from a band," says Jackson, who sold vintage clothes on eBay for a living during their unsigned days.

Jackson provides a striking and iconic focal point for the band's energetic live performances, and is the most photogenic member of a group that includes two other stylish females in guitarist Emma Chaplin and bassist Reenie Hollis. "Looking good doesn't do any harm," she says. "But I don’t like the suggestion that a band must be style over substance just because there are girls in the band."

That she lost out only narrowly and rather incongruously to Madonna as Sexiest Woman at the NME awards illustrates how far her own star has already risen. She has drawn flattering, if obvious, comparisons to Blondie's Debbie Harry, for both her vocal style and her attention grabbing presence. While Jackson insists that she looks up to nobody in the rock frontwoman stakes, it's a refreshing prospect to have one of the first truly memorable female singers in indie since the days of Elastica's Justine Frishmann and Sleeper's Louise Wener. "I had posters of Justine Frishmann on my wall when I was younger," says Jackson, "there aren't enough girls in bands that make it to a decent level." With Jackson and the girls garnishing much of the attention afforded to the band, it's easy to imagine Cox and drummer Screech Louder (named by hippie parents, who may or may not have been 'Saved by the Bell' fans) feeling left out. Yet Cox insists that they love shopping "as much as the girls do."

The Long Blondes show a healthy wariness both of the attention they have already received in their short existence, and of being lumped in with an arguably non-existent Steel City scene (along with the ubiquitous Arctic Monkeys, and the less well known likes of Milburn and Razor Stiletto).

"Sheffield is not some kind of musical Mecca," insists Cox. "But since there’s not much going on there at times, young people can concentrate on rehearsing and writing songs." The city's educational establishments may have brought the group’s members to Yorkshire, but it was the cheap, youth orientated and easy going lifestyle it offered that kept The Long Blondes in Sheffield and allowed their music to emerge free of the pressures more fashionable locations might have exerted. "Being in Sheffield kept us out of the public eye long enough for us to develop, it gave us the freedom we needed," says Cox.

It has been a suitably singular development so far for a band that formed "almost by accident," but if The Long Blondes debut album is anything to by, it sounds as though Sheffield's newest industry, imaginary or not, is doing just fine.

The album 'Someone To Drive You Home' is available now

Words: James Hurley