Hip-hop trio Young Fathers have won one of UK music's most prestigious awards as they collected the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for their album Dead.

The Edinburgh-based act were little fancied for the award and beat acts like hot favourite FKA Twigs and Damon Albarn to the £20,000 prize.

In a brief acceptance speech, the group's Alloysious Massaquoi said simply: "Thank you, we love you, we love you all."

The group had been just 14-1 to collect the prize at a ceremony at the Roundhouse venue in north London, hosted by Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw.

The group have shifted only a handful of copies of their album with just 2,386 sold by this week - just a sixty-fifth of the quantity sold by fellow nominees Royal Blood.

Even following their inclusion on the shortlist, they managed to sell only an extra 531 copies of their album - a 31 per cent rise.

Simon Frith, who chaired the judging panel, said of the winners: "Young Fathers have a unique take on urban British music, brimming with ideas - forceful, unexpected and moving."

At a press conference after their win, the taciturn trio had to be asked to smile by photographers and still continued to look stony-faced..

Massaquoi - who is joined in the band by Kayus Bankole and G Hastings - said: "We go out and do what we do."

The act, formed in 2008, have clocked up appearances at numerous festivals and have been described as a "psychedelic hip-hop boy band".

They follow in the footsteps of recent winners such as James Blake and Alt-J, as well as other past victors such as Pulp, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand.

Bookmakers were expected to take a hammering on the winners with some firms offering up to 25-1 at one stage.

FKA Twigs had been the 11-4 favourite on the 12-strong shortlist with bookmaker William Hill, with poet and rapper Kate Tempest behind her at 3-1. Each of the shortlisted acts performed during the ceremony.