Kero Kero Bonito - Build It Up

Of all the snippet-style, instant crush lines that tumble around London trio Kero Kero Bonito’s latest giddy cut, “Don’t forget to put your own flag on top” feels the most appropriate. Since this summer, KKB have come across as the most perfectly timed pop act to grace 2014. Less a tag-along and more a shared pact with PC Music’s assault, their diet of Internet references, game samples and J-Pop is very much of its time. But this is a fleeting business. Tomorrow’s conversations will be very different, and already the sheer density of PC’s output feels like an energy drink’s caffeine dose beginning to ware off.

It’s in the London trio’s interests to create their own path, then, marking territory with their “own flag”. On ‘Build It Up’, the motifs are still there - gooey, cute synth notes, party whistles, tinny drum machine percussion - but as with the recent ‘Flamingo’, more emphasis is on writing straight up massive pop songs. Gimmicks creep in, but these traits belong very much to KKB. Sarah Bonito continues to steer drastically between English and Japanese, lyrically, but it’s not some crowd-pleasing move. From the start, Kero Kero Bonito have been treading their own path. In the last couple of months they’ve been running parallel with hype staples, but they’ve kept enough of a distance to keep the momentum going. If any squeaky-clean but sinister online sensation is capable of breaking big in 2015, it’s these guys.