I’m starting think I have a weird fetish for bands formed at University. Is this the Achilles heel I’ve long feared (or more frighteningly, a reverse chip-on-the-shoulder type thing, having never been to Uni and consequently never having had to listen to these smugly talented bastards holding court in the SU every Thursday after rehearsals?). I genuinely don’t know.

But first it was Coldplay, in their early days when they didn’t have a care in the world and spoke with the sort of floppy, polite confidence of a Jenson Button.

Then, in the Noughties, it was Manchester’s rhythmically intense Longcut and more recently those loveable Crookes boys. Now it’s this lot.

Formed in the second year at Leeds University, ALT-J have become regulars on the site ever since their first set of demos emerged earlier this year. If they are not signed within the next couple of months, I will be honestly shocked – not that they need a deal to justify themselves.

“We didn’t even mean to be a band,” says Alt Joe, “we just wanted to do tracks really. I think we used music as a way to get to know each other.”

My first interview with ALT-J is conducted over an ISDN line, inbetween the recording of their debut BBC session (see below), so I struggle to put faces to voices.

But it’s easy enough to pick up their desire to build and craft pop songs, without becoming po-faced or pompous. They are bright and funny and able to take the piss out of themselves (again, much like the early Coldplay).

Having finished their fine art degrees – and waited for Gwil to return from a year’s studies in Berkeley – they are currently honing the songs which originated from their days mucking about with Garageband (“the only program we could afford”) while shaping some new ones – possibly influenced by their shared love of Metronomy and Radiohead.

Yet there is something already distinct about The J. The sound seems to hover just above the ground, inspired by a magician’s touch (look! Barely any strings!). It has this light, earthy percussive touch, and a thin, warm coating of guitars and keyboards. Not to mention the vocal images over the top, which summon up grainy film-clips cut from a mobile phone (“I write everything down that I like the sound of and I go back and collage it all together”).

It’s really quite lovely, but hard to snatch from the air; ponderous, but with purpose.

You can find more of their work on their Facebook page, but for now here’s the session version of ‘Flood Of Blood To The Heart.’

There are also gigs at Bristol’s Thekla on August 18 and Nottingham Stealth on August 20.