Wake up at the back! Haven't you been paying attention? The Kooks are Luke, Hugh, Max and Paul, Brighton's new indie darlings.

Luke Pritchard met his band mates at the Brighton Institute Of Modern Music, where he felt many of his fellow students were just looking to be in a band to get famous, rich or laid.

On Monday, The Kooks squeezed their burgeoning egos into the 150-capacity Pressure Point, having been bumped up from the Freebutt.

The first thing I noticed was the expanse of curly hair on offer, making me wonder whether Luke had put the band together based on coiffery rather than artistic principles.

Their songs, however, were tight, thrashy little numbers with echoes of Britpop which came alive on stage with a youthful, hormonal zeal reminiscent of The Subways or early Manic Street Preachers.

Tracks such as the funky Matchbox or almost-ballad Do You Love Her? showed a depth of character while sporting a Libertines-esque swagger.

You can see why Virgin signed them up just three months after they formed.

Luke is not much of a talker on stage and his vocals, while tight, felt constrained by the size of the venue and buried by the PA. But you could feel the energy waft around the tiny venue (Hugh snapped two guitar strings he was slamming his instrument so much). As they rolled out Eddie's Gun - a song about erectile dysfunction - crowd-surfing broke out.

The Kooks feel like a band demanding to be much bigger, with one eye on the crowd and another on the stadiums in their head.