Little Boots, Komedia, Brighton<br>Max&iuml;mo Park, Guildhall, Southampton

They're big shoes to fill, but Victoria Hesketh is walking tall with her mix of lo-fi electro pop and high ambition

There cannot be many pop stars whose influences include both Ralf Hütter and Rolf Harris but, teetering around the stage with a Stylophone in her hand while Kraftwerkian synth pop pulsates behind her, Little Boots appears to be one.

Victoria Hesketh, a 25-year-old from Blackpool, formerly of nearly-made-it Dead Disco, was the winner of the influential BBC Sound of 2009 poll at the start of the year. This is only one of the reasons why her life for the past six months has been a whirlwind of catwalk shows and VIP parties, from Hoxton to Hollywood and back again.

The other reason, and this hasn't escaped the attention of picture editors, is that – unlike previous BBC Sound of winners (Keane, say) or this year's runners-up (White Lies) – she's frankly a bit of a cutie. That's why, when she isn't inside a recording studio or on a stage, Hesketh's been doing photo shoots till she's blue in the face. Quite literally: on the morning of this show, she's been painted an intense shade of indigo for the cameras.

Of course, she could say no. But there's a steely streak of ambition in Hesketh which might be what it takes to turn herself into an indie Madonna. At this stage, for example, she's not above appearing on the BBC Breakfast sofa when there's a new single to promote.

All of which, so far, amounts to a phoney war. Here's where it starts getting real: the closing night of the Great Escape festival and the crazy Komedia headline slot (last year it was Glasvegas), the one the whole city, and indeed the whole industry, wants to be at. Tonight, while Andrew Lloyd Webber puppet Jade Ewen fails to have "her time" at Eurovision in Moscow, a DIY pop princess grabs her moment with both hands.

With her gold lamé dress and wonky blond topknot, wandering across a stage decorated with LED pillars and Pink Floyd prisms (she calls them "space triangles") in front of an anonymous band (drummer boy, keyboard nerd), the tiny Lancastrian is a total star. Her voice, strong yet vulnerable, carries just enough sugar and juice to make her a pop thing rather than a purely indie concern.

She's perfectly placed to move between those two worlds. Boots balances the hi-fi with the lo-fi: in addition to the aforementioned Stylophone, her trademark instrument is a Tenori-On, a hand-held gadget which resembles a 21st-century version of an Etch-a-Sketch. Her DIY electro pop (a pianist since the age of 13, she writes all her own stuff) is pitched at the mid point between Kylie and Peaches, which makes her, more or less, an English Robyn. And that, of course, is completely cool.

Admittedly, her lyrics sometimes err on the side of banal. Take, for example, "she's a mixed-up girl in a ... [can you guess, readers?] ... mixed-up world". Or, for that matter, "New in Town", the current single whose chorus not unpredictably runs "I'm gonna take you out tonight/I'm gonna make you feel all right". Then again, you wouldn't get Lady Gaga writing a song inspired by Sylvia Plath (as Boots has with "Mathematics").

It never works better than on "Stuck on Repeat", her glorious, über-European debut single, originally written with Kylie in mind, which channels not only the spirit of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" but also that of the Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" and Laura Branigan's "Self Control".

But plenty of other selections from her imminent album, Hands, come close: notably "Remedy", "Meddle" and especially "Symmetry", the recorded version of which features Hesketh's hero Phil Oakey on vocals. Her immaculate taste in the electronic pop of the past is further demonstrated tonight by an inspired cover of Freddie Mercury and Giorgio Moroder's "Love Kills", and a stuttering but well-intended attempt at New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle".

If you wanted to conduct a scientific analysis of what the best British pop is about in 2009, you could do worse than take a DNA sample from Bootsy.

Actions speak louder than words, but Maxïmo Park aren't taking any chances. With them, you always get both. The word "drama", after all, derives from the classical Greek for "action", and the none-more-dramatic Geordie foursome bring the rich-vocabulary lyrics (you don't often get to chant the words "detritus" or "penultimate" at a gig) to life via the physical exertions of leading man Paul Smith, abetted by a Greek chorus shouting the narrative back in his face.

Smith, hatted and suited like a hyperactive Mr Benn, teeters precariously on the monitor wedges, leaping from one to the other like he's playing Frogger. A jack-in-the-box in burgundy and black, he more than makes up for the visual let-down of the standard indie blokes who make up the rest of Maxïmo Park.

It's no coincidence, surely, that he's a former art teacher, although admittedly it may be a coincidence that the acronym of MP's debut album, A Certain Trigger, is "ACT". Maxïmo Park's status has, like Smith's hairline, receded from the days when they were vying with the likes of Kaiser Chiefs, and uncomfortably found themselves headlining package tours above much faster-rising bands such as Arctic Monkeys. Right now, the people who listen to Maxïmo Park records, and attend their concerts, are people who actually get them, rather than people conforming to a Topman-dictated pseudo-indie lifestyle. This is all for the best.

In a surprisingly succinct set, the material from the new and perhaps less immediately anthemic Quicken the Heart suffers somewhat by comparison with that from ACT and Our Earthly Pleasures, but on the likes of "The Unshockable" and "Our Velocity", a strobe-strafed frenzy tonight, Smith ensures that, for a fleeting moment at least, Maxïmo Park quicken the pulse.