It’s Friday night at The Fountain, until recently Cambridge’s foremost alt-venue, and a girl who looks like Joni Mitchell is micro-dancing (imagine normal dancing in a narrow corridor) in front of an audience of students and dismembered mannequins. Venus Envy are mid-set.

Hailing from London, Venus Envy are a band of five Cambridge students who’ve been playing in the city for the last two years. They have original songs that you can find here. But the best way to experience them is live, and they’re not fussy about the kind of gigs they play. Guitarist Jackson Caines describes this is as a "trade off". “You can play balls where you get paid and the sound is good, but no one is really listening to you – it’s like a classy rehearsal. Then there are real gigs where we don’t get paid but the audience have more of an idea of who we are.”

These kinds of gigs tend to be at venues like The Fountain. The first one they ever played was there, for a Riot Grrrl night. Hence the feminist pun name (drummer Theo Wells wanted ‘Poon Tang Clan’). The venue is now closing, a surefire sign of ill health in the student alternative music scene. In a town with a supposed wealth of creative and intellectual talent, why is no-one playing, or attending, these gigs? Perhaps it’s because extra-curricular activities in Cambridge tend to be formally structured, gifting the involved student a coveted ‘treasurer’ or ‘secretary’ title to put on his or her CV. ‘Rock performer’ isn’t really the same thing.

The band put themselves in the catch-all ‘alternative rock’ genre, but this doesn’t do them justice. At their best, they are heavy and hypnotic, a languid wall of sound punctuated by singer Margarita Milne’s dreamy voice. They tell me that they “don’t attempt to create a coherent sound”, but I think they sound studiedly coherent. They are all experienced, in contrasting ways. Jackson used to play jazz and classical guitar, his pretty melodies complementing noise-rock philosopher Franklin Dawson’s more experimental tack. Theo is their most practised musician, drumming in a support band for The Libertines when he was 14. But it is bassist Eleanor Sanders White who receives the most effusive praise from her bandmates. I hear her described ardently as a “sick musician”, “the best bassist I’ve ever played with” and “the most intuitive of everyone”, always accompanied with enthusiastic hand gestures and wide eyes.

In fact, one of the only refreshing things about the alt-music scene in Cambridge is that it has good female representation. The rock genre historically tends to conceptualise female musicians, deifying where pop objectifies. It is rare to see girls cooperating, rather than competing, in music, and those most set up for admiration in rock are lone rangers in a sea of men (see No Doubt, Blondie, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). In Cambridge, it’s quite simply nice to see girls who are friends in music. Venus Envy are like a cool gang, replete with jazzy shirts and left-wing sentiments, but not explicitly ‘political’. I find them disarmingly sweet, perennially anxious about shitty sound equipment, and earnest in their mission to play actual original songs, inspired by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Beach House.

They do a new one, ‘Deeper Streams,’ at Friday’s Queens’ Arts Festival launch. It is funkier than their usual fare. Although three of their members graduate this year, they’ve no plans to disband, intending to play in London over summer and record more songs. Venus Envy seem fairly comfortable with their place in this non-scene.

Venus Envy can be found on Soundcloud.

They are playing a charity gig at the Portland Arms for Cambridge Rape Crisis on the 11th March, and King’s Mingle on the 13th.