Album: The Puppini Sisters <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Betcha Bottom Dollar, VERVE

With Dita Von Teese - that's Mrs Marilyn Manson to you - bringing burlesque strip joint culture into the artistic mainstream, and Mary Harron's film about Fifties pin-up icon Bettie Page drawing admiring notices, there's clearly a retro-kitsch cheesecake aroma in the air at the moment. So the time is probably perfect for The Puppini Sisters, three classically-trained chanteuses from Trinity College of Music bent on reviving the heyday of The Andrews Sisters.

Inspired by the cartoon trio in the delightful French animated film Belleville Rendezvous, the Puppinis can do virtually inflection-perfect versions of swing standards like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", The Chordettes' "Mr Sandman" - here augmented with a sparkling Django-esque gypsy guitar break - and Irving Berlin's "Sisters", whose swing-lite backing incorporates twinkling celesta. Appropriately, the arrangement genius behind those deft touches is producer Benoît Charest, who was Oscar-nominated for his music on Belleville Rendezvous, and who adds his own digits to the finger-snaps and foot-stomps rhythm bed that underpins the Sisters' a cappella harmonies.

Not all of the Sisters' retreads are as wholly successful - for all its requisite marimba rhythms, "Sway" lacks Dean Martin's louche quality, and their "Java Jive" doesn't quite have The Inkspots' creamy ease, being more mannered than relaxed.

But that's only half the Puppinis' appeal: the element that's winning them fans on the chic club and rag-trade circuit is their re-imagining of pop classics like "Heart Of Glass" - transformed here into a cowboy canter-along - and "I Will Survive", which transfers rather well to their style. But the standout track is Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights", live performances of which apparently recreate Kate's original windswept choreography, in triplicate as it were.

While the languid double-bass swing style somewhat denudes its emotional power, the song's serpentine melody provides ample opportunities for bravura bouts of elision, and the gentle keening of glass harmonica and Ondes Martenot in the background of Charest's arrangement is a masterstroke. Indeed, his input may be the crucial factor in helping elevate The Puppini Sisters above the merely gimmicky; and prompts speculation on what they might cover next.

I can imagine them doing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ("here we are now, entertainers," etc), and even "Pretty Vacant"; but the one I'd really like to hear is "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35".

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Wuthering Heights', 'I Will Survive', 'Mr Sandman', 'Sisters'