Breaking Artist: Foals

Who: Foals, a buzzy U.K. post-punk act that digs funky African grooves and is more than willing to rock a house party.

Sounds Like: Frontman Yannis Philippakis, drummer Jack Bevan, guitarist Jimmy Smith, bassist Walter Gervers and keyboardist Edwin Congreave spike their propulsive rhythms with lean, sparkling guitar lines and riotous chants that Philippakis says were inspired by Alan Lomax chain-gang recordings. Cuts like "Balloons" and "Cassius" feature funky guitar riffs, horns played by the Brooklyn Afro-beat group Antibalas, and the atmospheric production of TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, whose studio techniques included running drums through distortion pedals.

Vital Stats:

• In addition to the cinematic quality of their music, the band shares a love of movies, which helped spawn their name. "Larry [Schemel, guitarist and employee at L.A.'s famed Amoeba Records] has a huge Sixties and Seventies horror movie collection," Olivier says. "There was a book on his shelf called Midnight Movies, and when we played our first gig we didn't have a name so he just wrote that down."

• Besides singing in a band, Olivier also knows her way around a kitchen. "I love cooking. It's right up there with music for me," Olivier says, talking about her job as a twice-a-week chef for a Beverly Hills family. "I never had culinary training. I totally use the Rachael Ray book when I go there."

• Not only does the band cover the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," they cover it twice: Once in English and once in French as "Mes Reves Des Satin." "I heard the song on a Femme de Paris compilation, and there's a version by [Sixties French singer] Patricia that we wanted to cover," Olivier says. "So that's why we did it in French."

Hear It Now: The band's new self-titled EP is on iTunes now, along with their first two albums. Check out the above video to watch and hear Nick Zinner's remix of the band's "Souvenirs."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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