Since there's hardly anyone else in the wood-paneled downtown Manhattan dive bar where the Kings of Leon congregate whenever they're in town, there's no reason for Nathan Followill to be bashful. "Hey, look what I got," he says. He pulls off his tweed blazer and unbuttons his shirt to reveal a pair of new tattoos on his chest: a Native American dream-catcher on the right and Betty Ann on the left, over his heart. The amulet, according to the twenty-five-year-old drummer, is a tribute to the fraction of Cherokee and Chickasaw blood coursing through his veins. The name is his mom's.

In the bar's tiny back room, where a dozen or so people are taking advantage of a late-night leniency toward the city's smoking ban, Nathan's brother, singer Caleb Followill, 23, has planted himself on a black leather couch. The two other, youngest members of the Nashville rock band, little brother Jared, 18, and cousin Matthew, 20, opted to stay in their hotel room tonight. Hardly your typical young Southern-rock-stars-in-the-big-city behavior, and Nathan and Caleb are quick to mock it. "They're probably talking to their girlfriends on the phone," Nathan says, disdainfully. "Last night," Caleb scoffs, "they sat in the room watching The Wedding Singer and splitting a Caesar salad. I swear."

For his part, Caleb is only a tad more sociable: While Nathan genially chats up a brunette in knee-high boots, Caleb sucks down his Heineken and slouches lower in his seat as if he could make himself disappear by sheer force of will. In the U.K., the Kings' unfiltered roots rock and strange, gothic American back story — the three brothers grew up barnstorming through the Southern revival-meeting circuit with their evangelist dad — made them superstars. There Caleb would never be afforded such anonymity, but here in New York's East Village, he's just another pensive hipster in too-tight jeans and a moth-eaten T-shirt. Which is just fine by him.

Caleb has no compunction about owning up to his neuroses: In fact, he wrote an entire album about them. Aha Shake Heartbreak, the Kings of Leon's second album, was partially designed as a showcase for "every insecurity I have," says the singer. Two songs on the disc refer to his anxiety about going bald, and another one called "Soft" is fairly self-explanatory. "If all people want to talk about is, 'The Kings of Leon do drugs and hang out with models,' I'm gonna give it to them straight," he says. "You want to talk about how you saw me doing blow with such-and-such supermodel? Well you know what my rebuttal is gonna be? 'I couldn't get my dick hard that night.'"

Those kinds of rumors — often apocryphal tales of drug excess, STDs and sexual dalliances with boldface names like Paris Hilton and Kate Moss — haunt the Kings in the U.K., where tabloid headlines about the band are nearly as popular as their albums. Even before the Kings released their debut, Youth and Young Manhood, in 2003, the Followills were being hailed in the British press as the best American band in decades. These four Southern boys had the right pedigree, from their weird religious upbringing to their long locks and retro fashion sense. And then, of course, there was the music: A unique blend of hillbilly garage rock and postpunk that had the press dubbing them "Lynyrd Strokes." Aha Shake Heartbreak could never be described so simply. A departure from the compact ditties of their first album, the follow-up is not only more personal but also moodier, more angular, more complex — more distinctly their own. It also represents a major commercial risk. "The last record was more whiskey, and this one's more wine," Nathan says.

For all their success overseas, the Kings are still relatively unknown at home. Their first album, Youth and Young Manhood, sold around 750,000 copies outside the U.S. and just over 100,000 copies here; Aha Shake Heartbreak, out this month in the States, debuted at Number Three on the British charts last October. But the band's stateside prospects got a sudden boost last month when the band was selected as the main support act for U2's spring tour. "We're now relevant in our mom's eyes," says Nathan, though he acknowledges that Betty Ann doesn't really know who U2 are.

And neither did the boys until late in life. Growing up as the sons of Leon Followill, a traveling Pentecostal minister, Caleb, Nathan and Jared weren't allowed to listen to secular music — only gospel. "We wouldn't have gotten caned or anything," says Nathan. "But there would be a lecture."

Still, from the start, the boys' musical influences were forged as a combination of the church choirs they attended each week and the rock & roll songs they listened to on the sly. "I used to sleep with a radio under my pillow and listen to oldies," says Caleb. "Other nights I'd get a cassette of my dad preaching and listen to that. I'd wake up with the worst cricks in my neck from sleeping on that radio." ("Now he sleeps with a Valium under his pillow," Nathan jokes. "No crick." )