There are no sure things in pop music except for the dreary inevitability that the X Factor winner will bag the Christmas No 1 slot.

But now an elfin blonde singer and keyboard player who writes about magic and sounds like Kylie or Debbie Harry might have done if they had been raised in Lancashire is poised to change all that.

Little Boots has topped the BBC’s annual poll of the most promising musical talent for the new year, and if she is not a household name by the summer the industry will be in a state of shock.

Five of the six previous winners of the survey have gone on to achieve global fame and blockbuster record sales, starting with the rapper 50 Cent, whose Get Rich or Die Tryin’ became the fastest-selling debut album in history in 2003.

Since then Keane, Corinne Bailey Rae, Mika and Adele have all stormed the charts, even if they have not always pleased the critics. Only the Bravery, a New York electro-rock group that headed the 2005 list, failed to sweep all before them.

The list is based on tips from more than 130 leading tastemakers, including music critics, magazine editors, broad-casters and influential bloggers.

Other acts who made the top five in previous years include Franz Ferdinand, Wiley, Razorlight and Joss Stone (Sound of 04), Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs (Sound of 05), the Feeling and Guillemots (Sound of 06), Klaxons (Sound of 07) and Duffy, the Ting Tings and Glasvegas (Sound of 08).

So Victoria Hesketh, 24, from Blackpool who has performed as Little Boots for less than a year and whose songs are currently available only over the internet, can be forgiven for sounding a little overwhelmed as she contemplates the year ahead.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God’, when I heard,” she said yesterday from an hotel room in Los Angeles, where she is putting the finishing touches to her debut album.

“This is the real deal now. When you look at who’s won it before it’s a pretty spotless track record. I just hope people in Blackpool will hear me on the radio now. I don’t want to stay as this critically acclaimed cool thing – I want to reach as many people as I can.

“I’m a real person. I just happen to make ridiculously epic pop songs in my bedroom.”

Hesketh’s Little Boots incarnation is her third crack at pop stardom. When she was 17 she auditioned for Pop Idol, covering a Nina Simone song and got nowhere. Then, after paying her way through the University of Leeds by playing piano in hotel foyers (she left with a first in cultural studies, partly thanks to a dissertation on “The concept of originality in jazz and the commoditisation of improvisation”) she was in an all-girl indie band called Dead Disco.

However, it is as a solo artist, free to indulge her whimsical tastes, that she has finally broken through with a sound that she descibes as “electronic, unashamedly pop music, often kind of dark with some strange sounds and weird lyrics”.

Although her first single is not due until May, fans have flocked to her YouTube page, where she posts endearingly amateurish videos of her covering requests on her home piano, often in her pyjamas.

Peter Robinson, editor of Popjustice. com, which has championed Little Boots, described Hesketh as “the perfect pop star”. He said: “She knocks out great tunes and takes her music seriously while celebrating the giddy heights of pop at its best. As a result, she understands pop in a way that puts her miles ahead of her nearest rivals.”

White Lies, a dark London rock trio, Florence and the Machine, a singer-song-writer, Empire of the Sun, an Australian fantasy pop duo, and La Roux, a London synthesiser duo, made up the rest of the top five for 2009.

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