Forget the Gaga comparisons. Little Boots may be Britain’s reigning blonde synth-pop bombshell, but you won’t catch her hitting red carpets with Kermit the Frog or posing half nude on the cover of Rolling Stone. Plus, she’s not opposed to wearing pants.

To put it simply, Little Boots is just a little more low-key.

“All that sex stuff is really not me,” Boots says of the comparison. “We’re both blonde and we both have a lot of synth in our music [but] I don’t really pay attention to it. I’m not offended by it. I’m not annoyed. I’m just kind of like whatever.”

With the matching hair colours, the shared affinity for producing exhilarating electro-pop songs and corresponding friendships with Perez Hilton, it looks like it’s going to take this songstress from across the pond a little bit longer to shed the “UK’s Lady Gaga” tag, whether she pays attention to the pundits or not.

When andPOP caught up with Little Boots at the Cadillac Lounge on Queen Street West in Toronto, she was just Victoria Hesketh—her infamous platinum hair tied back in a messy ponytail, sipping on water, raving about all the nice Canadians she’d met and looking more like the girl you’d sit next to in Psych 101 than an international pop diva.

Hesketh entered the UK music scene back when she was actually a student at the University of Leeds with a little indie rock band called Dead Disco. But when Hesketh’s dreams of making funky, danceable pop tunes clashed with the band’s direction, she ditched the boys and took to YouTube to broadcast her talents. With that, she became a bit of a sensation.

YouTubers take note. Since her covers of MGMT and Madonna blew up on the site, Little Boots hasn’t looked back. The British media hailed her as the future of pop after winning the BBC Sound of 2009 Poll and garnering a coveted Brit Award nomination before she actually had a full-length album in hand.

“I was on the covers of magazines and I hadn’t even [officially] released a song. It felt like a big bubble of all this talk and all this hype…it was all really scary,” she says. “But once the album came out, the bubble kind of burst and I was ready for the backlash.”

But the backlash never came. The album, “Hands,” hit #5 on the U.K. charts and went gold.

“Now I’m relieved. I just feel like I can get on with my job now and stop worrying.”

Little Boots’ job, it seems, is to provide fans with sweet and sugary synth-pop. It’s that upbeat, sophisticated sound reminiscent of early-80s acts like Depeche Mode and Eurythmics paired with Kylie-esque poppy vocals and light, soothing lyrics. But in a post T-Pain pop climate, Little Boots’ reliance on synth-driven songs and a tech-heavy sound could be perceived as just a resurgence of a passing fad.

The pint-sized powerhouse is quick to defend her art.

“In American hip-hop, it’s become this really cool thing, but in the UK and Europe, dance pop has always been around and it was never really abnormal,” Hesketh explains. “To me, to say synth is a genre is really kind of weird because to me it’s just a tool—like a guitar. It’s like saying ‘guitar music.’ It’s just what I play,” she says with a wave of her hand as if to fend off detractors.

“I guess it’s good for me that it’s kind of taking off [here] but I’d probably do it even if it wasn’t cool,” she laughs.

Well, with the current disco-infused hits of late, Little Boots seems to fit right in. The singer is clearly an avid fan of pop music, revealing her admiration of The Beatles to an unexpected love of Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus.

“I love Miley songs. I will totally admit to it. She has some great pop songs.”

But the same machine that gave us Hannah Montana herself is the same one Hesketh slams for producing too much, as she’s pegged, “stupid pop.”

“I think pop got so caught up in the industry in the last 10 years or whatever so now it’s all too calculated. I mean, you can see when something is a genuinely good song and when something has been tweaked together by boardrooms full of A&R men in suits,” she says.

Then, Victoria Hesketh, self-proclaimed techie nerd and synth-pop enthusiast, seems to have a moment. After denouncing a subset of the very genre that she is now a reputable member, Little Boots smiles and adds:

“I just love good pop music. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of music. I want to make music that everyone can enjoy and everyone can connect to. I don’t want to make some weird white noise record,” she says.

“I want to make something fun that everyone can enjoy and make them feel happy or positive.”

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