Hometown: Brooklyn, NYC.

The lineup: Bill Gillim (vocals, guitar), Joel Ford (bass, keyboards, vocals), Aynsley Powell (drums), Andrew Brady (guitar).

The background: Not long ago, American alt-rock bible Spin put Hall & Oates on the cover, with the headline "Why Hall & Oates are the New Velvet Underground", because everyone from Death Cab for Cutie to Band of Horses has been worshipping at the mega-selling 80s duo's altar. Tigercity have taken their love of H&O - and Yacht Rock, the US variant on Guilty Pleasures, i.e. soft-rock acts like Toto and Boz Scaggs - into the studio, where they've attempted to capture the high-gloss sound, smooth rhythms and irresistible choruses of American 80s chart-pop.

And they've done it really well. They're not the first: Zoot Woman, featuring Madonna's producer Stuart Price, tried this sort of thing at the start of the decade. Then last year rumours began circulating that Canadian retro-electrofunk duo Chromeo were about to collaborate with H&O, while Palladium took rolled-up jacket-sleeve pop to unironic extremes, although the fact that they got dropped by Virgin last month doesn't augur too well for anyone purveying this type of shimmery-keyboards, R&B-tinged, bright'n'shiny disco-pop.

Tigercity, who've had the Rolling Stone seal of approval ("Our new favourite band," they wrote earlier this year), are arguably the most accomplished H&O wannabes ever. They come from Brooklyn, which, like Glasgow in the 80s, would appear to be a city divided by a love of drone-rock and disco, CBGBs and Studio 54, the Velvet Underground and Chic. Because, for every bunch of black-clad Strokes wannabes feigning ennui and murmuring over slovenly played three-chord riff-punk, there's a more colourfully attired group in thrall to super-produced funk-pop that strains for the high notes and strives for the slick musicianship and sleek, airbrushed sound of the all-time chart greats.

They have the most impeccable taste in the history of MySpace. Look at their list of influences: Prince, Talking Heads, Daft Punk, the Cars, Prefab Sprout, David Bowie, Chic, Earth Wind & Fire, Roxy Music, the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk, Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Scritti Politti. Not bad, eh? Ok, the Cars we could have done without, but otherwise - perfect. Interesting that they should go for Roxy Music - if anything, their track Red Lips sounds like late-period Roxy, long after Eno had gone, when they were at their most windswept and wan, circa Avalon. Singer Gillim even does a passable imitation of the languid and languorous Ferry croon. Elsewhere, it's Barry Gibb (or Prince) in full falsetto mode.

But forget all that cool stuff: Tigercity's greatest coup might be the way they take all the best bits from those really awful 80s bands like Foreigner and Air Supply - a guitar lick here, a drum pattern there - and compress them into new synth-funk shapes, with surfaces so polished Tubbs & Crockett could use them as mirrors. Are You Sensation, for example, features an INXS-ish choppy-guitar dance-rock pattern, and the lyrics about how "my body keeps on moving" are seriously suspect, but the whole thing is Alessi-ishly immaculate, all billowing textures and breathy, androgynous harmonies. We've heard half a dozen tracks from their debut album, and they're all this catchy and sublimely crafted. But somehow we suspect that their very sonic and conceptual immaculacy will mean Tigercity become a cause celebre for pop theorists not the general public.

The buzz: "This is Hall & Oates for the non-ironic set ... Hot disco licks with enough of a rock edge to let you know they mean it."

The truth: Unless you count the Feeling, we can't recall a successful Guilty Pleasures band, so we fear Tigercity are just going to get ecstatic reviews.

Most likely to: Sound good during a Miami Vice love scene.

Least likely to: Shift as many units as Hall & Oates, the biggest-selling singles act of the 80s.

What to buy: Pretend Not to Love is released by Strange Feeling on September 8, preceded on August 26 by the single Solitary Man.

File next to: Palladium, Zoot Woman, Das Pop, Hall & Oates.

Links: www.myspace.com/tigercity

Tomorrow's new band: Golden Silvers.