Chances are you’ve heard Defend Moscow already somewhere. Their debut shot across 2009’s musical bows ‘Manifesto’ has been picked up by everyone from Zane Lowe to XFM and soundtracked a whole spectrum of TV shows from Football Focus to Countryfile while Popjustice, The Guardian and NME have been fighting over each other to get those first few column inches.

The reason for the fever is simple: ‘Manifesto’ did what it said on the tin. Despite being ostensibly about Trotsky (yes really) it encapsulated the band’s manifesto, which is to create huge, all-encompassing timeless pop songs for the masses. Put more succinctly in the words of chief songwriter, guitarist and programmer Dave Fawbert, “great tunes for everyone”. While his fellow songwriter (and the band’s main vocalist) Jon Beck might dismiss that as “sounding like a supermarket catchphrase” it sums up the Defend Moscow modus operandi.

“It’s music for the people” Dave asserts. “Forget The Enemy. They’re great at what they do, but that’s not music for the people.  Whigfield – that was music for the people. Sold three million copies and everyone loved it; even hipsters would doff the cap. Lady Gaga is music for the people.”

While you could quite easily map Defend Moscow’s populist DNA alongside Whigfield and Gaga with a poker face, musically they’re a world apart. Theirs is a post-millennial hybrid of anything truly radio friendly from the last thirty years. The most frequently-used touchstone is The Pet Shop Boys but their stew throws in everything from U2 to Leftfield and The Wombats – usually in the same song. Check out the Chic-meets-Chromeo strut of Something Good to see this cutural cut ‘n’ paste in action. Get them on their influences and the five of them launch into a jumbled flow of reference points; Chic, Toto, The Meters, M83, Sigur Ros, Modjo, Kylie, Kyte, minimal techno, Massive Attack and Daft Punk are some of the first to come flooding out.

Lyrically, Defend Moscow’s limitless imagination sees them call on everything from nuclear war to the fall of Communism to terminal hospital patients in a quest to understand the human condition. They use real life events as metaphor for internal conflicts and end up with sentiments we can all relate to. But their dark imagery comes pre-wrapped in shiny shimmer pop; it’s up to you if you take it at face value or delve a little deeper.

Take the forthcoming single Die Tonight which on the surface is a bass driven dancefloor anthem, but give it a little scratch and you’ll find a lyrical exploration of the thoughts that would go through the minds of those told they are minutes from death following a nuclear attack.  It’s an unlikely scenario but one that is often brought up around a pub table – if you only had 5 minutes left to live, what would you do?