When you mention Scottish music, many people instantly think of whisky-soaked fiddlers playing jaunty ceilidh tunes or the mournful drone of a lonely piper in some misty glen. That’s part of it, but there’s a time and a place for everything, and with many of our freshly home-grown talents making a real impact on the indie, rock and dance scenes it might be about time to give Scottish music a little more (street) credit…

Ayrshire’s favourite sons Biffy Clyro, for instance, are currently riding high on the success of their fourth album, Puzzle - they’re headlining the Kerrang! tour right now and next single, the live favourite Who’s Got A Match?, is due out in February. With their complex, multi-instrumental, harmonic yet heavy guitar-driven sound, and such catchy song titles as Toys, Toys, Toys, Choke, Toys, Toys, Toys and Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies, it’s perhaps understandable that it’s taken over a decade for the lads to find mainstream recognition. Thankfully, their storming live performances prove that the time hasn’t taken its toll and we can continue to expect great things from them.

A nomination for 2007’s Mercury Music Prize turned the spotlight on to The View, a delightfully down-to-earth, tousle-headed young foursome who named the band after their local pub at home in Menzieshill, Dundee. Combining bouncy punk-pop riffs with searingly honest lyrics about hangovers, ‘skag trendy’ dropouts and wearing the same jeans for four days, they certainly gave partygoers at Glasgow’s official Hogmanay party plenty to sing about.

Over in the capital, meanwhile, we Edinburgers saw in the New Year with local indie veterans Idlewild, who’re currently working on their 7th album to follow up the well-received Warnings/Promises and Make Another World. Their style has undeniably changed from the spiky, punky teenage-angst of Hope Is Important, meandering along to a more grown-up, orchestral sound and introspective mood on The Remote Part (2002), which owes at least some of its sweeping grandeur to the inspirational setting where it was written - Sutherland, far north in the Highlands - but their popularity has only grown. Idlewild’s set at the Gardens was followed up by some stylish electro-pop from fresh-faced new boy Calvin Harris, whose tongue-in-cheek debut album I Created Disco was the rather surprising sound of the summer. The 23-year-old DJ and producer proudly claims to have spent “0p” recording it in his bedroom in Dumfries, using an ancient Amiga computer!

Fans are getting excited about upcoming 2008 releases promised by synthy postrock nutters Mogwai and much-loved post-punk art-fops Franz Ferdinand - Alex Kapranos recently revealed that the third album will involve “an old Russian synthesiser built from spare parts in the Cold War”. Fellow Glaswegians El Pres!dente are also set for a comeback after being nicknamed ‘the Scottish Scissor Sisters’ for the funky, glitzy glam of their stomping 2005 debut. The future of Scottish rock - following in the footsteps of Del Amitri, Big Country and The Jesus & Mary Chain - seems assured.

There’s plenty of room on the Scottish scene for gentler, softer-edged sounds too, as demonstrated by such luminaries as the late, great Teenage Fanclub, KT Tunstall and the more experimental noodlings of Boards of Canada, the Beta Band and Primal Scream. Fey, bookish piano-pop crooners Belle and Sebastian - once voted ‘the best Scottish band of all time’ by readers of The List magazine - have been around for twelve years and seem to go from strength to strength, continuing to delight new audiences with their dreamy, wistful, tragicomic tales set to delicate, yet arrestingly memorable tunes. Glaswegian lyricist Stuart Murdoch’s tender vignettes about watching ‘rain falling against the lonely tenements’, ‘stealing the hearts of lassies in the lavvies of the club’ and the aching realisation that ‘riding on city buses for a hobby is sad’ have always had a uniquely Scottish feel to them… and as we’ve seen, they’re in some damn fine company. The great, and rather underrated, young Scottish music scene is clearly bristling with talent, and I reckon 2008 has plenty of treats and surprises in store.