Band of the Week: Los Campesinos!

Hometown: Cardiff, Wales
Fun Fact: “Clunk-Rewind-Clunk-Play-Clunk,” the 35-second final track on the band’s debut EP Sticking Fingers Into Sockets, was performed as an impromptu encore to an impatient audience. The band says it will never be performed again.
Why They’re Worth Watching: Forsaking pretension for a loose sense of utter fun, Los Campesinos! will bring their punk rock spirit and amply varied instrumentation to Lollapalooza this year.
For Fans Of: Pavement, The Strokes, Architecture in Helsinki

Los Campesinos! are a typical college band. First, a bar-stool conversation about The Decemberists inspires a few fellow students to start playing music together. On Wednesdays, they pack into a dorm room and jam out. Then they add a violin. They play some shows. Then they record an EP with a respected producer and get picked up by a label. Following graduation, they get ready to play Lollapalooza. Yeah, typical school-kid stuff.

“We were making these noises but we had no idea what it sounded like all together,” says Gareth Campesinos! (like the Ramones, Los Campesinos! have all adopted the band’s name as their own) about the group’s formation as a septet in early 2006. “It wasn’t until probably about our sixth or seventh gig that we had a decent set [and] we could actually hear what the songs sounded like all together.”

From the start, the group’s mission was to have fun and keep things loose. Both the music and the band show a sense of humor that undercuts pretension. Gareth, who sings and plays keyboards, brought a glockenspiel to his first rehearsal. “I owned a glockenspiel," he recalls, "and I thought, ‘How can I show everybody else that I’m the man they want to sing in their band? I know, I’ll take a glockenspiel; nobody else will have one.'”

For Los Campesinos!, the past 12 months have sped by in a way that justifies the exclamation point at the end of their shared moniker. In September, the band recorded four tracks with producer David Newfeld (Broken Social Scene). Initially, they planned to release the songs “We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives,” “It Started With A Mixx,” “Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(S),” and “You! Me! Dancing!” as singles. But when respected Canadian label Arts and Crafts signed the group, Los Campesinos! decided to add two more tracks, including a cover of Pavement’s “Frontwards,” and package the songs as an EP.

This spring, six of the band's members graduated from the University of Cardiff, with singer/keyboardist/melody horn player Alex Campesinos! the only exception. They then immediately embarked on a summer U.K. and U.S. tour, which will include a stop at this August’s Lollapalooza festival in Chicago. As if they didn’t have enough to do, the band has begun rehearsals for a full-length album tentatively scheduled for February. Despite all this, the Campesinos! crew isn’t used to being “musicians” just yet. When they hit Lollapalooza, they’ll do so as fans.

“I’m really excited about seeing M.I.A, because I think she’s awesome,” Gareth says. “We’ve seen Yo La Tengo a couple of times, but it will still be awesome to see them.”