Klaxons feeling a little bit Mercurial

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Victory: Klaxons picked up the £20,000 winner's prize

Return: Amy Winehouse gave a performance of her latest song Love Is A Losing Game

The victorious Klaxons confessed they had drunk a bottle of brandy at the Park Lane awards

Winehouse at the ceremony

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• Who's up for the Mercury?

London band Klaxons were the surprise winners of this year's Nationwide Mercury Music prize, beating the favourite - troubled soul singer Amy Winehouse.

The Deptford-based four piece, who won for a debut album they were only recording this time last year, said they were shocked to win.

An emotional lead singer Jamie Reynolds said: "I love Amy's record but it's a retro record and the Mercury is about pushing music forward. We've made the most forward-thinking record in... I don't know how long."

In Pictures: Nationwide Mercury Prize

Earlier Winehouse gave an astonishing acoustic performance of Love Is A Losing Game at the Grosvenor House Hotel ceremony.

She silenced the room and won back some dignity, hopefully because the audience realised that the real story about her is her extraordinary voice. Her appearance came after massive media coverage in recent weeks about her collapse, her alleged drug taking and her subsequent holiday in St Lucia with husband Blake Fielder-Civil.

She sat kissing and cuddling Fielder-Civil, sitting next to her father at a table at the ceremony.

After the award was announced the couple quietly left and were driven away in a waiting car, confounding those hoping for some car crash antics.

Winehouse's father, taxi driver Mitch, stayed until the end, saying: "She was very happy to be here. And I'm just thrilled she was here. She gave a brilliant performance and she looks well."

Another outstanding performance at the ceremony came from Bat For Lashes, who plays harpsichord. Arctic Monkeys and The View were among the other nominations.

Klaxons, who performed the single Golden Skans, released their album Myths Of The Near Future in January this year after signing to Polydor in 2006. It reached number two in the UK charts. The band was set up in 2005 by lead vocalist Jamie Reynolds, originally from Bournemouth who moved to London after being made redundant from a record shop.

He approached Warwickshire-born Simon Taylor-Davies, the housemate of his girlfriend, and the pair then recruited bassist and singer James Righton - who was at school with Taylor-Davies in Stratford-upon-Avon and taught him how to play the guitar.

The band used Reynold's redundancy money to buy studio kit and record their music. Earlier this year the lineup was bolstered by the addition of drummer Steffan Halperin.

Taking to the stage in tears, the four - who confessed they had been drinking brandy all night - said: "A year ago today we were in the studio making this album and watching the Arctic Monkeys stand up and take this award. And we thought, we're going to make a really great album. Now we're here and we're really happy."

Reynolds - on crutches after breaking his ankle stage-diving in France - said : " It's g reat people have recognised what we do. It seems music's a lifestyle option now, parents like what their kids like, and that's not quite right."

This is now the third year out of four that the Mercury award has gone to an indie band.

The judges need to look more widely for winners if the prize is to avoid becoming a big-money arm of the NME Awards.

The Klaxons win was not undeserved as the album is a genuinely exciting, raw collision of punky guitars and electronics, and their leadership of the scene they originally named "new rave"as a joke has had a major impact on both British music and fashion in the past year.

Klaxons will do better than this, but the judges have decreed that now is their moment. The future can wait.

Additional reporting: Alexa Baracaia

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