IT helps to have friends in high places. Just ask Stephen Jones, frontman of indie favourites Babybird, whose latest album owes a huge debt to a certain Johnny Depp.

Babybird are at the Colchester Arts Centre tonight (Wednesday) from 8pm. Tickets are £9, available from the box office on 01206 500900 or on the door.

Jones has been enjoying cult status among music lovers and fickle critics since the mid-1990s.

His musical trip started after he received a grant from the Arts Council.

With it, he started an experimental theatre group and it was while composing soundtracks for the company’s productions, he realised his true love was music.

Quickly building a loyal underground following, his initial lo-fi releases gained tremendous critical acclaim and have now gone down in UK music folklore.

Jones’s first major recording opportunity led to Ugly, Beautiful, a collection of re-recordings of previously released Babybird material, which included Goodnight and You’re Gorgeous, the single that propelled Babybird into the mainstream limelight.

The single went all the way to number 3 and stayed there for 17 weeks. Between 2000 and 2006, still making money off of the hit singles, Jones got back to his roots.

His latest album, Ex Maniac, came about after film star Depp, who has been a fan of Babybird and a friend of Jones for many years, hooked him up to producers, Bruce Witkin and Ryan Dorn.

While Depp was working with Witkin on the music for Sweeney Todd, he urged the producer to meet Jones on his next trip to London. Witkin did just that and subsequently asked Jones to send the producers a few demos.

The result was Ex Maniac, his sixth studio album, released this month along with single Unloveable, which itself is accompanied by a video directed by Depp.