"I've tried to immerse myself in Japanese culture," says Charli XCX, international hit maker and Britain's next big pop-star-in-waiting. Of course, that's the sort of comment you might expect the 22-year-old to make on the eve of her first headline shows in the country ...

As singer of the Bay City Rollers, the tartan-clad teen-pop sensations that conquered the world in the 1970s, Les McKeown forged a special bond with Japan that endures today. "If you have that image of The Beatles coming down the steps on the plane, it ...

Gaz Coombes has grown up, but he hasn't grown old. The carefree effervescence that characterized his band Supergrass, Britpop's cheeky monkeys, has vanished, but five years into a solo career the band's erstwhile frontman refuses to settle into the traditional post-split career trajectory. "I find ...

For his fourth solo album, "American Interior," Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys went the extra mile. Or more accurately, the extra 1,800 miles. Following in the footsteps of his distant relative, 18th-century Welsh explorer John Evans, Rhys precisely retraced the long journey taken by ...

Belle and Sebastian are headed back to Japan, but are not quite as you remember them. For nearly 20 years the Glasgow indie darlings have been pigeonholed as producers of twee, lovelorn songs for corduroy-clad outcasts, but with their newly released ninth album, that ...

The dressing room of Camden's Electric Ballroom in London is hardly the most glamorous of settings at the best of times, and for Royal Blood it is the early evening after the night before. The previous night, the blues rock duo played its biggest ...

An un-Googleable delta symbol name (∆), genre-hopping, challenging sounds and esoteric lyrics inspired by Japanese deer are not the usual recipe for surefire pop success. Yet when alt-j arrives in Japan for its debut headline show — catapulted by 1 million album sales, a ...

Sat on the upper deck of his band's tour bus, Pixies frontman Black Francis shrugs his shoulders and screws up his face. This is, I've come to realize, how the man born Charles Thompson IV tends to field questions before, if and when the ...

Much has changed in Arcade Fire's world since the band was last in Japan. Back in February 2008, the Canadian six-piece, still propelled forward by the momentum created by its debut "Funeral," a record that attained perpetual cult status through nothing more than its ...

Chatting to Annie Clark, what is noticeable is how much she differs from her artistic alter ego. The music she creates as St. Vincent — ambitious art-rock that blends avant-garde sound with melodic richness — has been refined to the point that now, four ...