Kaiser Chiefs on a roll

When an old girlfriend wants you back because you're famous, it's satisfying. But it doesn't mean you have to take her back, especially if she was the love of your adolescent life who went to university and cheated on you.

Welcome to the gleeful and revenge-filled life of Ricky Wilson, singer for Leeds quintet Kaiser Chiefs.

"I was 17 or 18 and I was madly in love with her," he remembers.

"Anyway, she goes to university and sleeps with someone else and I'm heartbroken and then she comes to one of our gigs about a month ago in London. It was nice to see her. She takes my number and the next night rings and asks if I'm still in London."

Of course, being the rock'n'roll superstar he now is, he was long gone and holed up in a glam hotel in somewhere like Brighton.

"Then she says, 'Oh, after seeing you last night just rekindled these feelings'. I was like, 'Bloody hell, where were you the last seven years when I was working in a bar?'."

Now, Wilson and band write songs about girls like that, and other everyday occurrences.

Their debut album, Employment, is an uplifting, hum-along-cum-sing-along pop gem, akin to Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand and fellow Brits band Bloc Party.

Recently, says Wilson, someone described their music as being about everything and the kitchen sink.

"I thought it was an insult but then I thought about it and it's true. I'm just writing about normal stuff and what I know and it's pissed off a lot of my ex girlfriends 'cause they recognise themselves," he laughs.

"The thing that people tend to say about us is that we're always just us, and we always look like we're having a good time. Well, we are having a good time because it's not an act. I think a lot of bands make the mistake of acting and trying to be cool and people just don't like that anymore. People like it if you're grateful to be there. Every time we do a gig we try to make it like a party. I want everyone to start dancing."

They've got America dancing. He's astounded the Kaiser Chiefs have played sold-out shows from New York to Seattle and everywhere in between. It is remarkable, considering they're so Brit sounding. But again the similarly fun and quirky Franz Ferdinand also made it big in the US-of-A.

In New Zealand, we're not so fond of some British bands and their either zany, and sometimes bland, music - Baby Shambles, the Libertines and the Stereophonics anyone?

The trend, it seems, is if the US like them then we might, too. Coldplay and Franz are the most recent examples.

"It's a bit surreal thinking that five guys from Leeds can sell out places halfway around the world just because they've heard one song," says Wilson, referring to the rollicking and jumped-up anthem, I Predict A Riot.

Their riotous live shows help add appeal, too. During their first American show in Seattle, Wilson jumped off a speaker stack and tore ligaments in his left ankle, so he's been performing with a walking stick. And drinking a lot to ease the pain, he admits.

"I heard a funny story. Apparently one night in Austin I got really drunk, and some guy from the record company said he saw me walking down the road at three in the morning with my stick over my shoulder and I wasn't even limping."

They all met about eight years ago. Hodgson, Peanut, and Rix went to school together and they heard Wilson was keen to be in a band.

"They came to meet me outside my school, Nick was there drinking piss, they were about 16 years old, and he took one look at me and thought, 'No, he's not cool'."

But because they were into the same music they saw each other at clubs in Leeds, like 60s soul club, Move On Up.

"Every Wednesday we used to go there," he says. "Nick thought he was a pretty good dancer, I thought I was a pretty good dancer, and we'd have dance-off competitions and eventually we figured out neither of us were that good. But we bonded in clubs and that's how we started."

There's more punk, mod and Britpop influences bouncing out of the Kaiser Chiefs music but Wilson insists: "The 60s soul stuff is the only thing we as a band can agree on."

Until last year they used to be known as Parva. With a change in name came a change in fortune.

Listening to Employment the thing you can't get away from is the sparkling innocence of a band who can't believe their luck.

Although the songs were written before their success, a track like Oh My God, with the mantra, "Oh my God, I can't believe it, I've never been this far away from home" sums up how in awe they are of their success since last year.

"By rights I should be thinking about it and exploding with excitement. But I suppose it's a bit like watching The Lord of the Rings - that was in New Zealand right? So this is good - and there'll be an elephant the size of a building with Orcs all over it, and after about three hours of stuff like that, you don't go, 'Wow, this is amazing'. You're just a bit numb to it.

"I suppose it's a bit like that for me at the moment, I'm doing all these things and I feel like a bit of a snivelling s*** for not being excited all the time but if I was excited to the level I should be, I think I'd have a heart attack."

But, he admits, being in the Kaiser Chiefs is "a free round-the-world trip singing karaoke".

LOWDOWN

WHO: Kaiser Chiefs, Ricky Wilson (vocals), Nick Hodgson (drums/vocals and main songwriter), Andrew "Whitey" White (guitar), Simon Rix (bass) and Nick "Peanut" Baines (keyboards).

RELEASES: Employment (2005).

TRIVIA: Ricky Wilson's favourite Rolling Stones song is Sympathy For The Devil but he also loved performing the druggy anthem, Sister Morphine, at school assembly.