Maidenhead R&B group offered record deal

An R&B singer who has performed on the same bill as talent contest wannabes Lemar and Chico was celebrating after her group was offered a record deal.

Kat Hitti and her band mates in Espree were told about the offer at a meeting with company chiefs on Friday, and the girls are now due expecting to release their first single in August.

Details of the contract are still being hammered out so the group did not want to publicise the label involved, but they now have a £10,000 budget to start filming a video for the single, I Can Do That - an upbeat R&B track that Kat described as a Destiny's Child-style anthem for independent womanhood.

After Friday's meeting she and the rest of the band - Bethany Barber, 18, from Kent, Laura Pringle, 19, from Croydon and new member Helen Kurup, 21, from Enfield - played a Sunday night gig in front of 2000 people at London's Hammersmith Apollo supporting US crooner Omarion.

And despite things not going entirely to plan - the Maidenhead-based group were booed before going on after a microphone failure delayed their appearance - Kat said the show was 'fantastic'.

"That's the best reception we've ever had," she said. "They absolutely loved us. It was amazing.

"When I heard the booing I thought, 'we cannot go on, we cannot go on', because it's never happened to us before. But we proved them wrong. They shut up when we started singing.

"Afterwards when we were outside so many people came up to us and said, 'you guys were amazing'. People were asking for our Myspace site and they were really interested."

Kat, who went to The Piggott School in Twyford Road, Wargrave, got her lucky break after being head hunted by music firm Sureal Management.

She had been working as a carer at Hill Top House in Twyford when she was contacted by the company after they heard songs she had written in her bedroom and then posted on the internet.

The band have now had 16,000 plays of their Myspace tracks, and according to Kat they are racking up more hits every time they play.

"We’re thinking of doing an LA-style video for our new track "I Can Do That”, she added.”That’s what we’re working towards at the moment.

"There’s a lot of things happening for us right now."