THE last seven months have been pure gold for Southampton’s Thomas Tantrum and the latest nugget is that their debut album nominated for Xfm's 2009 New Music Award (voting ends on February 3.) It started last June with Lily Allen adding Thomas Tantrum into her top friends on MySpace and in October T-Mobile used one of their tracks for an advert.

It’s all because the four piece have qualities that stick out in a saturated market: groove infested songs that are quirky and catchy, plus the band don’t take themselves too seriously.

This proved invaluable when they shot the video for Work It, the first single off their debut album.

It was directed by Guy Hawkins from Juice Moving Images and has to be the most accomplished on the south coast.

There again it did have a budget of £1,500 which, believe it or not, is how much management or record companies are willing to spend.

But, Guy told me, “It gives bands and producers the chance to get their work out there.”

As you don’t get much in TV for that kind of outlay Guy pulled a few favours especially in the set department.

The result was a fantastic comic book theme with colour, fun and life: essential ingredients if you’re going to get noticed.

“The main aim,” Guy said, “is to make a video that will go viral so that one person tells another and they tell someone else.”