Florence Welch Kisses Her Female Competition

Florence Welch is all about the love. The fiery leader of Brit-pop act Florence and the Machine recently responded to reports that she kissed fellow English pop tart Victoria Hesketh (aka Little Boots) on the lips at the NME Awards earlier this summer. Welch admits she was tipsy at the time, but she doesn't seem altogether remorseful either. "I just did it to show that there's no love lost between young British female artists," she said. "I love them, and I love grabbing them and kissing them."

Hesketh has since told the British press she hadn't consented to the face-sucking session and that she is most certainly a straight lady. Meanwhile, Welch is on an industry-wide campaign to show the world that the new crop of British pop stars aren't to be pitted against each other in a Britney Spears versus Christina Aguilera kind of publicity war. "I was trying to make a statement," she says. "We all love each other and we are all in this together." And her fellow English songbirds should beware, because Welch may not be finished with her "kissing the competition" crusade. "I'll kiss Elly if that's what it takes," she says, referring to the singer for electro-pop act La Roux.

While Welch's kissing spree is all about spreading the warm, fuzzy kind of love, she's got at least one tune about the dramatic, desperate kind. The song 'Kiss with a Fist' from her debut album 'Lungs' conjures images of domestic violence. "You hit me once / I hit you back / you gave a kick / I gave a smack," goes the first verse of the exhilarating punk-style scorcher. But Welch says the lyrics aren't to be taken literally. "When you love someone you just want to tear them apart in a way," she says. "It's a play on words about that kind of anger that rages between couples when they feel so passionately about each other."

Welch's obsession with dark, violent imagery comes from her deep-seated love of punk rock. "Since I was 16 I've hung out with punk bands who sing about dead dogs and broken glass, stuff like that," she says, "So I'm into that kind of dark, visceral thing. It makes crowds go mad." The inspiration has proven successful for Welch: 'Lungs' has just been nominated for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize -- along with La Roux's self-titled album -- which goes to the best album by an artist in the U.K. and Ireland.