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Frankie and Heartstrings fly the flag remarkably fertile scene Sunderland. Says Dave Simpson as the classic kitchen-sink drama and the miners strike 'still alive in their music

Frankie and the Heartstrings played at Sheffield Leadmill not long ago, part of a tour of the country. There was barely anybody there, but frontman Frankie Francis wasn't fazed. Running a hand through his shaking quiff, he gave a commanding performance, all quivering hips and gyrating bottom, and frequently ended up in the middle of the meagre audience. By the end of the night, Francis's showmanship and the Heartstrings' rumbustious, spiky soul had transformed a graveyard atmosphere into a party, with the handful of people there queuing up to shake his hand.

"We've got a policy where you can never rely on the crowd," he says. "A gig isn't their job. It's ours. You've got a responsibility to put on a show even if it's to just one person."

Like Dexys, the Heartstrings have a stance, an aesthetic running through everything from Francis's quiff (modelled on James Dean) to guitarist Michael McKnight's penchant for plus fours. "When we supported the Paddingtons, everybody laughed at us," admits McKnight, who is clearly the most obsessive about the band's moral crusade against chain-store tops and tracksuit bottoms. "People can get quite aggressive with you for dressing a bit dandy, but it never put me off. I'd just prance around town and deal with it."

"Cheeky" is a word that peppers their conversation, and describes an attitude that covers everything from asking the owner of the Italian cafe where we meet if he has any waitresses available, to insulting other bands. At just two singles old, Frankie and the Heartstrings have already claimed to be "bigger than Jesus" and "better than the Beatles", while both U2 ("shit") and the Drums (whom they recently supported) have been cheerily dismissed.

\\ "It 's all part of the fun to be in the group," shrugged drummer Dave Harper, who could have stepped straight from the 1950 platform. "We never take it personally when other people slag us. A man came up to me quite a few better" than the Beatles? You 're not the best team in Sunderland. 'We finished with a good laugh. "

Banda will go back. Francis and McKnight were in college together. Harper and McKnight played in groups for many years. They came together as a group, when Francis said he 'd bought a bass and asked him to jam.

"He was the worst bassist ever," says Harper. "Asking him to sing was the only way to get him off the bass." Francis turned out to be a natural frontman. "Two gigs later he was on the floor, pushing his quiff back and serenading whichever young lady was in front of him at the time."

The three made their debut as a four-piece when pal Steve Dennis joined on bass. But the fifth member was pivotal. Keyboardist Pete Gofton was once better known as Kenickie drummer Jonny X â€" he's also Lauren Laverne's brother â€" and did more than knock the music into shape: he used his contacts to get it heard, and they duly signed to indie heavyweight Wichita. "I'd always thought of record labels as a little man in a big chair," says Harper. "But they were a big man in a little chair, in a room piled high with records. They are the loveliest people and they don't have a bad band on the label."

The Heartstrings are idealist and romantic about pop. The band's record sleeves are beautifully designed, featuring photographer Keith Pattison's images from the 1984-85 miner's strike â€" not that their provenance is immediately obvious. "We didn't want a policeman wrestling a guy to the ground," Francis says. "But if you look at those children's faces [on the sleeve of Tender], they haven't eaten for 24 hours and they're queuing up for food. You can see the confusion and hurt."

The band will play the launch of Pattison's book, and the strike has clearly cast a long shadow over the band's families and upbringings. Both McKnight's grandfather and Harper's father were striking miners in the pit village of Murton. Harper says that while he was always educated about the strike, he has only just heard his father's stories in detail: "They never talk about them. I'm not a guy to cry, but I cried my eyes out."

McKnight looks from his coffee and sweep back, sassy edge, noting that while the shock was terrible, the camaraderie that was built within communities is still talked about today. It 's what Wearside Soul Brothers want to achieve with the help of pop music.

"We've grown up in households where we were taught the enjoyment of sharing things with other people," he says, while Harper adds, slightly cheekily, "We're a very caring, sharing, tactile sort of band."

Frankie and the Heartstrings play Glastonbury on 26 June.