Alphabet City

First there was Up with People. Then came the Village People, Nia Peeples, and James Brown's Funky People. Now please welcome M People, a surprisingly unannoying disco/ soul group from London by way of Manchester and built around the House-tinged production of famed Mancunian DJ. Mike Pickering, the Philly-soul melodies of Paul Heard, and the stunning contralto of soul diva Heather Small. There's also a guy named Shovell—just Shovell—who plays percussion quite a bit and dances around onstage. If you can imagine, say, Happy Mondays doing Wilson Pickett songs, only with Roberta Flack singing, you're in the ballpark.

Last year, M People was the first dance act to win Britain's Mercury Music Prize, the music industry's equivalent of the Booker. Now comes Bizarre Fruit, a silky return to the golden age of disco—and M People's second album to be released in America, which threatens to make them the most popular British dance group in the U.S., at least since Soul II Soul. "The snob element likes to create this giant rift between dance bands and rock bands," says Heard. "But I don't think there's much difference between the people who buy our records and the people who listen to Soundgarden."

JONATHAN GOLD