It could be the best-ever gap-year opportunity for a talented girl singer who can also play a musical instrument or two.

Mercury Prize and Brit Awards-nominated pop group Guillemots are looking for someone answering that description to make up the numbers for their tour starting later this spring - and have taken the unusual step of inviting applications on their Myspace page.

The four-piece band, which usually adds two extra members for live shows, has a vacancy because saxophonist Alex Ward has dropped out to concentrate on his own band.

Writing on Myspace, Birmingham-born lead singer Fyfe Dangerfield says: "We're trying to figure out how to fill the Alex-shaped gap.

"We may end up not having anyone else extra at all, but one idea is having a female singer with us who can ideally play something else too - sax, a violin/viola, percussion - anything really, we can sort of work around it.

"The main thing is just finding someone with a really distinctive, uninhibited voice who could add some harmonies/noises to some of our songs, and obviously, someone who is also able to be on tour a lot of this year."

Guillemots' second album, Red, is released on March 24. Three preview concerts have been announced for London, Oxford and Manchester earlier in March, with an extensive international tour likely to follow.

The band invites people to send an email to mail@lunchtm.co.uk with information about themselves and a link to enable them to listen to or download some examples of their voice.