Alisha's a fictional character, but she's a bit of both of us. So says Shelley, who with older sister Karen, makes up Alisha's Attic, a duo who write tooled-up, tripped-out classics with almost unnerving panache. "We got the attic bit from the fact that we had a studio in the attic", says Karen, "and we wanted to use a girl's name to create this character that had lots of elements of both our personalities. We've definitely got a mental picture of her."

Karen and Shelley grew up in Barking and currently live four doors down from each other (completely by coincidence) in Dagenham. Although they're both in their mid-twenties, they've been musicians since their early teens.

"I remember going to the careers teacher and saying I wanted to be a singer," says Shelley, "but she just laughed. It didn't stop us though, and Karen and I have been in loads of bands since. Too often though, we've just been singing other people's songs. It was a good experience, but it's all been leading up to Alisha's Attic."

"We've done some terrible stuff in the past," admits Karen. "But now we've gone through all that, we've got to the stage where we're confident enough to do what we want to do, the way we want to. We're proud of the music we're making now. It feels right."

And the music is disorientatingly gorgeous. With its feet in pop and its head somewhere in the stratosphere, it's possessed of a certain kaleidoscopic vigor. Just don't go looking for any explanation to the lyrics.

"I've got loads of books full of poems and lyrics that I've written," says Karen, "and I go through them picking out lines from all over the place, things that seem to go together, even if it's not in a really obvious way. I know what they're on about, but I hope they touch people on, a more instinctive level." Sisters they may be, but don't go getting any ideas about any two-peas-in-a-pod stuff.

"We disagree with each other about almost everything," says Karen, "but it's those contrasts that make the music we do together so strong. And we both trust each other's opinions, look out for each other."

"Everyone thought I was a bit weird at school," says Shelley, "and one day someone threw an orange at me, so Karen went and beat them to a pulp. Everyone thinks I'm the wild one 'cos of the way I look, and she's just a sweet blonde, but it's the other way 'round. I'm a peace loving hippie at heart."

"We're not like Noel and Liam though," says Karen, "we don't fight with each other." "Our tongues are much more vicious," adds Shelley.

You might spot some of their influences (taking in everyone from Prince to Hendrix to Wendy and Lisa to Kate Bush), but they shape proceedings into something entirely original, something insistently personal.

First fruits come via a single "I Am I Feel," which along with their debut album, has been recorded at The Church in Crouch End, England.

"We built a council bedsit inside the Church, and did everything inside it, including our vocals, photos and the video," says Karen. "We even slept in it a couple of nights."

The result is an intoxicating album quite unlike anything else you'll hear this year. In a world where originality is too often abused as an accolade, Alisha's Attic make genuinely modern, genuinely thrilling sounds. And their confidence is extraordinary.

"Throughout the album we've got these little vignettes," says Karen. "Just little snippets that get to the point where you think you're just about to hear the greatest things ever written, then, whoosh, they disappear and you're whisked off into something completely different."

A Pandora's Box of barbed-wire candy twists?

Up in the attic, Alisha is polishing her halo and sharpening her horns. She's coming out to play and she wants kingsize everything. Don't even think of trying to resist.

Alisha is a bit of a bad angel. She's got a halo and horns, wears a fairy dress with jeans underneath, and while she's perfectly capable of being sweet and nice, she might just beat you up!

(taken directly from the Mercury Bio on ALISHA'S ATTIC at their oficial web site.)