Some bands – the Ramones, say, in their matching leather jackets – just look effortlessly right together. You could never say that about Hot Chip. With their mismatched barnets, facial hair, spectacles and outfits, they look more like a team sent in by a TV programme to give someone's house a makeover than a pop group. They have no conventional frontman – main vocalist Alexis Taylor plays synthesiser side stage, clad in clear-framed, outsized spectacles of the sort sported by Coronation Street's Reg Holdsworth.

Such lack of interest in the traditional staples of style and performance could only work if the music is just right, but during almost a decade and five albums, Hot Chip have learned to perfectly fuse pop and dance. On their fifth album, In Our Heads, the influence of 1980s pop melodies is ever stronger, with the outstandingly catchy Don't Deny Your Heart vaguely reminiscent of Boy Meets Girl's 1988 single Waiting For a Star to Fall given a pulverising new chassis. But while the gig is driven by the delicate interplay of Taylor's melodious, gently melancholy falsetto and Joe Goddard's lugubrious baritone, it has the energy of a rave.

The crowd punches the air as songs are stripped down, built up again and segued into one another: golden oldies Ready for the Floor and Outside collide with homage-paying snatches of Prince's If I Was Your Girlfriend and Fleetwood Mac's Everywhere, with the dreamy new likes of Look at Where We Are more than holding their own with such competition.

Not much happens on stage – when Taylor finally says, "It's great to be back", it feels like the sphinx has spoken. But there's a lovely moment when he and guitarist Al Doyle celebrate under the lights, and people cheer the unlikely lads like superstars.