Out of the garage

You’d hardly guess it from their radio hit “I Predict a Riot!” But the Kaiser Chiefs used to be a garage band. “And it’s all your fault,” vocalist Ricky Wilson says drolly. “The Detroit stuff. The White Stripes being proclaimed the saviors of rock ‘n’ roll. Who wouldn’t want to try that? But we didn’t realize that five guys from Leeds don’t do American garage rock very well.”

So the quintet opted to sound like themselves -- which is a delirious dip into the Britpop wellspring attended by the likes of Roxy Music, Blur and Madness. As Wilson points out, “British music is happiest when it’s been able to enjoy its own Britishness.” Right.

Less than a year after bullying their way onto a Leeds bill as local support for Franz Ferdinand, the Kaiser Chiefs (named for South Africa’s top soccer team) are signed to Universal, are getting played on KROQ and Indie 103.1 and have a full-length album, “Employment,” due in the spring. Wilson and bandmates Nick Hodgson, Nick Baines, Andrew White and Simon Rix spring their act on L.A. next week, with shows Tuesday at CineSpace and Wednesday at Spaceland.

“The goalposts are widening for us,” Wilson says. “For us, it’s suddenly a huge adventure.... We’re playing for the world already, and we’re not even done playing for the U.K.”

A royal concept

No surprise that Louis XIV got started in Paris. Wine, women, song, that wonderful palace, Versailles. But enough about the Sun King.

Louis XIV -- the twitchy quartet from San Diego responsible for the radio single “Finding Out True Love Is Blind” -- got its start in Paris too. But not in a palace. No, Jason Hill, Brian Karscig and Mark Maigaard convened in a rather spare loft with modest recording equipment and the idea for a concept album about a teenager who thinks he’s Louis XIV.

“What happened was the most kick-ass, effortless recording we’ve ever done,” Karscig says. “It was funny -- we never set out to sound like anything. We wrote the song titles before we wrote the songs. We left everything stripped down. And it turned out to be a completely royal rock album.”

At the time, the trio formed the core of the San Diego outfit Convoy. But the concept became the band. With Jimmy Armbrust added as a fourth member, Louis XIV began distributing homemade CDs and won fans with their visceral, bluesy sound. “A lot of people thought we were committing career suicide” in pursuing the project, Karscig says. The opposite transpired: Atlantic signed the quartet, and after the band releases the “Illegal Tender” EP on its own imprint on Jan. 25, a major-label full-length is due April 5.

Louis XIV opens for the Kaiser Chiefs on Wednesday at Spaceland.

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Fast forward

* Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis is making a solo album for Omaha’s Saddle Creek Records, the label her band left when it formed its own, major label-connected imprint to release “More Adventurous” last year. Collaborators include producer Mike Mogis and Portland, Ore., songwriter M. Ward.

* Raging retro-pop night Kiss or Kill has moved to Tuesday nights at the Echo, and Midway is the resident band this month.

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-- Kevin Bronson