R&B star Rihanna is to team up with Mercury Music Prize-winners Klaxons for a performance at the forthcoming Brit Awards.

The band are to give the star’s hit single Umbrella an interesting new sound for the collaboration at Wednesday’s ceremony in London.

Rihanna is up for the best international female award, while Klaxons are nominated in two categories - best live act and best breakthrough act.

And co-vocalist James Righton insists it has been difficult rehearsing for the event as Rihanna is currently thousands of miles across the Atlantic ocean in the U.S.

He says, "We’ve made our own slant on a contemporary version of it (Umbrella). It’s an electronic version with guitars on it, with a twist of Golden Skans (the band’s hit single).

"It’s been a bit of a funny one because she’s in America and we’re over here. They’ve got this funny idea of what our band sounds like and we’ve done three or four different versions.

"Her people kept sending versions back going ‘No, this sounds more like you’. It’s strange when someone thinks they’re better at being you than you are!"