Hailed as the Sound of 2009, Little Boots is rounding the year off with her third single, Earthquake. About to embark on her first UK tour, Little Boots AKA Victoria Hesketh talks about stateside success and how it feels to have 100,000 people buy your album...
You've just been doing a tour in the U.S and every show sold out. Did you anticipate it would do so well?
No. The whole tour sold out, which was amazing. It was only a small tour but it was definitely encouraging. Just the reaction was great, everyone loved it. Everyone knew the words, even to obscure album tracks so it was really nice.
And you're now about to headline a UK tour. Are you excited?
I'm really, really excited. We've tried to plan some special stuff. Maybe not as much as I'd like, but I'm not made of money. But its going to be really fun, I think. Ellie Goulding is the main support and I'm really, really excited about her playing with us. I think its going to be a good fun tour.
Earthquake is the third single from your album Hands. Has the song been going down well live?
We've been opening with it at festivals and its been going down really well. Its got a really good epic opener. I think I felt it was just a really strong song from the beginning really, so I definitely wanted to do it as a single at some point.
The Earthquake video has a lot of imagery that fans who have followed you from the start will be familiar with. Do you think the video is a lot more representative of you?
I think that and the Remedy video are very representative of me in terms of the essence of the project and the ideas behind it. Earthquake almost feels like the pinacle of quintessential Little Boots. I don't want to be Little Boots-by-numbers so now I want to do something different. And then everybody will probably moan and be like, "Where's the space? Where's the unicorns?" I don't want to tie myself to some weird caricature of myself. If I've got Katy Brand doing parodies of me then I need to change it up.
Has there been a moment yet when you've thought, “I’ve done it, I'm a pop star’?
I don't think so. I don't really think of myself as a pop star. The album went gold a couple of months ago and that was nice that at least 100,000 people have my record. That's kind of an amazing feeling because all I ever wanted to do was make music for people and to think that that many people have the CD in their house feels amazing. But I still find the word 'pop star' a bit weird.
You gathered a fanbase in the beginning by uploading videos to Youtube, blogging and building a relationship with fans online. Is using the internet in that way still something that is important to you?
It's difficult because, on the one hand I'd love to keep it up and do more of it. I know my old-school fans are like, "why don't you do any of that stuff anymore?" One of the massive reasons is that I have no time to do it. I'm not going to come to you on Youtube now. You have to get out of your house and come and see a show.
Finally, your song Stuck on Repeat has a strong cult following amongst your fans. Do you plan to release it on CD at some point?
Yeah, basically the head of Radio 1 said an eight-minute edit of Stuck on Repeat would be perfect, they'd love to put it on the A List. So to all those people who sit on pop forums who don't know anything about pop campaigns and sit dissecting other people's pop campaigns, yeah, I think an eight and a half minute edit would be played on radio and it will be a No. 1... You can go and buy a vinyl. That song is two years old now, it’s not relevant to release it now. It’s done its job. I think that there are a lot of people who are quite deluded about what hit songs can be.
The single Earthquake is released on 16 November. The album Hands is out now.
