THE Voluntary Butler Scheme, no it’s not a community service programme for the upper classes but one of the hottest music acts right now.

A touch Motown, a bit Badly Drawn Boy, it's the brainchild of one man band Rob Jones.

Holed up in his bedroom in Stourbridge just outside Birmingham, the 23-year-old has been writing pop songs of classic sound, imagination and homemade ingenuity.

A couple of years ago, Rob filled his days surfing drum stools, playing for a string of bands and relishing the life of a jobbing musician. But then, the offer of a solo gig came up.

"So I wrote four or five songs, and played the show," he explains. And? "And it wasn't all that," he laughs. "But straight away, I knew I didn't want to play stuff with bands anymore. So I thought I'd try a little bit harder and write some proper songs – and I wrote a dozen songs in a couple of weeks."

The result is The Voluntary Butler Scheme At Breakfast, Dinner, Tea – Rob's debut album, made in a bedsit.

“Just a bedroom full of wires and keyboards,” he explains, in his native Stourbridge accent.

Three singles to date, Trading Things In, Multiplayer and Tabasco Sole have blended The Jackson 5 and classic Motown to an instinctual, home-made aesthetic. Not lo-fi, nor hi-fi, but a sweet marriage of the two.

“I love loads of classic production sounds, but then I’m trying to be disrespectful to it somehow,” says Rob. “You know Money Mark (Mark Ramos-Nishita, the Beastie Boys' producer)? He’s got so many classic elements in there, those great Stevie Wonder keyboard sounds, but he messes around with them, disrespects them – that’s the approach I love.”

But production ingenuity would be nothing were it not for the wonder of the songs – warm, observational pop polaroids that live in the everyday, but suddenly seize your heart with a simple but affecting turn of phrase.