The Kooks take on the US

The Kooks frontman Luke Pritchard has been talking to Newsbeat about their forthcoming US tour, being Number One and going head to head with Madonna at Radio 1's Big Weekend.

Luke said he is annoyed about missing Madonna

You've sold out a few dates in America. How do you find touring the States?

I think our tour will go well there, people know us and know the songs. We sold 5,000 tickets in New York which is unbelievable especially after it took ages for us to get a record deal. We've just got to go and tour the record, get out there and play loads.

Do you have to pace yourself on tour?

You kind of build up a resistance to it to be honest. It's funny I was talking to (guitarist) Hugh (Harris)'s girlfriend the other day. She came on tour for four days and she was like, 'I don't know how you get onstage every night. It's mad.' But you just get used to it.

I think as long as there isn't too much promo where you do interviews all day and then you fly somewhere and play a gig, then you'll be OK. Otherwise you just feel grubby and I'm quite into my hygiene. But then you look at what The Beatles' tour schedule used to be like and think what we do is laughable compared to that.

So you like to be clean onstage?

Oh yeah I'm really into being clean. I regularly have outfit changes and hot showers every two hours.

I remember you used to have a really smelly tourbus. Has it been upgraded since?

Yes it has. It's really nice now because we've got two tour buses, one for the crew and one for the band. For years we were touring with 13 men in a bus but now there's just a few guys and a few girls so it's nice to have more space now. Next tour we're going to have a tour bus each.

How did it feel when your album went to Number One?

To be honest there are too many good things happening at the moment and I never trust that in life. I believe in karma so I'm just waiting for something bad to happen.

When you get those landmarks it's all very good but it's not something we focus on. On the day I admit we went out and had a few beers but it wasn't like we were living it up.

It's not that important to me especially now because the charts are more and more meaningless these days and all my life I've seen sh*t artists at Number One. What's more important to me is seeing people's faces and seeing them getting into the songs.

What's also great is coming back and feeling like you've got a lot of support from people that got into you in the first place. We still get criticised by a lot of people I'm sure but we're still selling out venues and people are singing along to our songs.

You're headlining Radio 1's Big Weekend with Madonna how do you feel about that?

I know, how weird is that? To be honest I would have kind of liked to see her so I was pretty annoyed. It would have been better if we were on before her.

I'm really looking forward to it though especially after last time because it was a real pinnacle for our band. But it's cool we'll probably keep our show simple so it's not too gimmicky. We won't have any blow up penises flying around or anything like that. Actually, we will, why not?

Is there anyone else you want to check out?

I'd like to see The Fratellis but I really hate their new single. I don't get it. They're a good band but I was really miffed by that single. I would love to see them though. I think they would be really cool live. I'd love to see Goldfrapp too. We did Jules Holland with her. She is something else. Being in her presence is really scary because she is so beautiful and angelic. She is amazing. Vampire Weekend are another band I want to check out, their record is great.