Mr Little Jeans : Runaway

Norwegian-born, LA-based synth pop artist Mr Little Jeans (aka Monica Birkenes) has made a few bubbles in the blogsphere with her covers of Arcade Fires’ The Suburbs and Beyonce’s Single Ladies – two demure and dispirited hipster cuts that sound pretty cool but suck all the passion, vitality and urgency from the originals. She gives me the irrits, launching her career off the back of other people’s songwriting and turning great tunes into synth pop wallpaper. Runaway, as might be expected, is a cool, atmospheric '80s-influenced pop tune in the vein of Ladyhawke and La Roux, which has buckets of style but almost no substance.