What is it?: An electronic psych-rock outfit consisting of four young men from Leicester, England, who sound like the Stone Roses, Kula Shaker, a bit of Primal Scream and other such bands that you have buried somewhere in your music collection.

We care because: The British press love them.

No really, we care because: Their creepy, kinetic musical collages sound like the backdrop to a robbery in a futuristic James Bond movie.

Fun fact: The band took their name from Linda Kasabian – the pregnant getaway driver of the Manson family. It also means "butcher" in Armenian.

Victim: Chris Edwards, the bass player.

NYROCK: Hi, you there?

CHRIS: Yeah, yeah.

NYROCK: How you doin'?

CHRIS: Yeah, not too bad. Trying to walk through Times Square.

NYROCK: You're doing this interview walking through Times Square?

CHRIS: Yeah.

NYROCK: Dodging tourists?

CHRIS: Exactly.

NYROCK: Well then. So your music is kind of scary, but in an exciting way. Like, it might make you pee your pants. Have you peed your pants recently?

CHRIS: No. Not since last week.

NYROCK: Oh good. What influences this scary, trippy music?

CHRIS: I think our scary, trippy minds, you know what I mean? In our heads we've got pretty fucked up things going on, so it just comes out that way. It's just what we do.

NYROCK: What freaks you guys out?

CHRIS: Oh, I don't know. I don't know really.

NYROCK: Times Square isn't freaking you out right now?

CHRIS: Uh, a little bit.

NYROCK: The band is big on groove, and you've said that groove is lacking from a lot of indie music, and you're right. How does Kasabian get its groove on?

CHRIS: It's just, you know, what we do, and just all our influences in music that we've listened to all our lives just all come out.

NYROCK: Who do you listen to that gives good groove?

CHRIS: There's loads of people, lots of different genres, not just the obvious dance music and stuff like that.

NYROCK: What was it about the U.K. hardcore scene that attracted you to it?

CHRIS: It was just something that you shouldn't be doing. When the rave scene was around, we were like 10 years old, so it wasn't like we could go to them and get E'd up at them. It was just mischievous.

NYROCK: A lot of bands, when they move out of their hometown to make music, they go to a big city for exposure. But you guys moved on to a farm. How did that isolation help you?

CHRIS: It helped us come into our headspace. We were out in the middle of nowhere. We'd have friends come by all the time and we ended up having parties and stuff like that. We just went out in the middle of nowhere so we could practice. We had a sort of studio, somewhere we could stay and sleep. It's like a little getaway where we'd get into our headspace and get on with stuff.

NYROCK: Do you still live on that farm?

CHRIS: No, we moved out in August of last year. We lived there for two years.

NYROCK: What kind of vibe are you getting from New York City?

CHRIS: A busy one. It's terrible, worse than when we came here in November. 'Cause of the dog show. There are little four-legged things running about.

NYROCK: So you're playing live tomorrow night, and the show is sold out. Does that make you want to pee your pants?

CHRIS: (laughs) No, not at all. We played for like, 20,000 people at Glastonberry and we supported the Who last year, so we're kind of used to playing shows. It's what we do. It doesn't bother us.

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