Punk is a term that gets thrown around a lot — play your music fast and loud, and you're automatically thrown into its endless genre pit. But if you trace it back, look at what made punk so damn, well, punk, it all comes down to turning established sounds into something that resists mainstream temptations. Something so fresh, so new, so now, that it just rolls off your tongue: “That's fucking punk rock.”

In that sense – for now at least – Blood Red Shoes epitomize punk. Taking only the bare instrument essentials, their stripped-down two-piece sound comes at you like a subtle sledgehammer to your auditory senses, a slow rock burn of guttural guitars and deafening drums that beckons to be heard. Part frisky, part ferocious, it hardly ever lets up, serving a sense of coltish urgency and hard-bitten attitude so lacking in today's musical world of shoe-and-navel gazing.

Made up of Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and Steven Ansell on drums, the band came to fame in 2005, shocking the Brit-rock rabble with an EP that was everything you wanted but were too afraid to ask for. Since then, they've released their debut LP, “Box of Secrets”, headlined the NME New Music Tour, played the Mercury Prize Sessions, and supported bands like Rage Against the Machine, Panic! At the Disco and The Breeders. You can YouTube 'em, you can buy their album, but there's nothing like hearing the raw punk sounds of Blood Red Shoes live and loud.

Visit www.bloodredshoes.co.uk for more