O’HOOLEY and Tidow are about to be huge.

The duo – Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow – are on a 15-date spring tour and just a month after its release, their third album, Hum, has been acclaimed by critics as album of the year and ‘poetical folk music for the times we live in’.

As if that wasn’t enough for the two Yorkshire lasses to celebrate, Dorset’s very own Billy Bragg contacted them last week and asked them to perform in his Left Field spot at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

“We are thrilled to bits,” said Belinda.

“Billy heard our album and got in touch and asked dif we would play his Left Field area.

“It’s a roundup of people with something to say about the current state of affairs.

“That sort of thing really helps, because we are all doing what we are doing and trying to earn a crust.”

Hum is a truly gorgeous album that gives a modern and optimistic twist on traditional folk while keeping the music’s timeless links with people and their communities. Motherhood, the Russian anarchist band Pussy Riot and even locally-brewed real ale all have a place on the wonderful CD.

“I think the recent revival in folk is like the real ale revival,” said Belinda, who is also enchanted by the thoughts of trying Dorset’s famous Piddle Brewery ales when the duo come to Bridport Arts Centre on March 29.

“People are fed up of the whole corporate thing, of drinking boring fizzy lager. “They want to get back to their roots.”

Even the title of The Hum is tight with the essence of the workings of a thriving community.

“We were talking to our neighbour and she told us about a house sale in our road and how it had fallen through,” said Belinda. “There is a factory at the end of the street and apparently someone came to see the house when the factory wasn’t working and all was quiet.

“They came back for a second viewing when the factory was working and were disturbed by the hum it made, so they didn’t want the house.

“We have lived there so long we don’t notice it and as the neighbour said, it gives her comfort to hear the hum because it’s good to hear people working during a difficult time.

“As soon as she said it, Heidi and I looked at each other and knew it was something important that needed writing about.”

By her own admission, O’Hooley and Tidow don’t write songs about love and they aren’t madly prolific.

What they do is write about things that matter – even if they do so in pyjamas over the breakfast table.

“We don’t write songs about love because there is so much else so say,” said Belinda.

O’Hooley and Tidow are at Bridport Arts Centre on March 29.

Call 01308 424204 for full details and tickets.