Virtually famous: The Regrettes

What feels like the entire music biz departs London for the seaside next weekend, when the Great Escape festival takes place around Brighton’s many gig venues.

It’s a chance not just for cigar-puffing suits with impressive-looking lanyards to seek out the next big thing, but ordinary humans too. Perusing the huge line-up, I’m particularly taken with the prospect of seeing The Regrettes, a teenage quartet from LA who mix Fifties doo wop with spiky punk.

They put a rocket up the wistful Dion and The Belmonts hit Teenager in Love on the B-side of their latest single, while on their early song, A Living Human Girl, self-assured singer Lydia Night dismantles expectations for women her age. “I can dress how I want/Not looking for a show of hands,” she sings.

In the video for another single that takes no prisoners, Seashore, she plays both a Suffragette and the US President, and sings: “I’ll still kick your ass even in my skirt.”

She’s also been featured on comedian Amy Poehler’s website, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. If you can’t make it to Brighton, she’ll be dishing out more noisy feminism at east London’s Old Blue Last on May 23.