BANDS

Warming Embrace

They’ve been embattled and embittered, dismissed and destitute. Now the British quintet Embrace is coming to the U.S., seven years after a debut that prompted music fans to speak its name alongside Oasis and the Verve. “It’s got us deliriously excited,” singer-guitarist Danny McNamara says from the U.K., where Embrace’s fourth album, “Out of Nothing,” has sold 434,000 copies. “I think everybody in the band has got a romantic picture of America.”

Embrace’s U.S. invasion, which starts Wednesday at Spaceland, seemed a pipe dream three years ago. The band was broke. It had been dropped from its label, and its early successes, including the No. 1 single “All You Good Good People” in 1997, seemed a distant memory.

The group -- including Richard McNamara (Danny’s brother), Steve Firth, Mick Dale and Mike Heaton -- worked on new songs for the next couple of years. The breakthroughs came when Coldplay’s Chris Martin gave the band a song he wrote, “Gravity,” saying it sounded more like Embrace than his band, and when Embrace started to work with producer Youth, the ex-Killing Joke bassist.

Working with a producer for the first time “was terribly difficult. We argued eight hours a day,” McNamara says. But the result was an album (due in the U.S. in May on Lava Records) of emotional-guy, anthemic rock that belongs on the shelf between Coldplay and the Verve.

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Young punks

Are the upstart bands getting younger and younger? Look no further than Orange. The L.A. quartet -- singer-bassist Joe Denman, 17, guitarists Mike Valentine and Jack Berglund, each 16, and drummer Zak Glosserman, 15 -- have been signed to Epitaph-affiliated Hellcat Records, the imprint of Rancid guitarist Tim Armstrong.

“It’s incredible and it’s weird,” Denman says. “Things like this are not supposed to happen when you’re 17. But we’re enjoying the ride.” The fledgling band’s retro-punk sound captured the fancy of the all-ages crowds at Ruby, the Tuesday promotion at the Key Club. “No way would we have gotten signed without those Key Club shows,” Denman says. Orange, which plays the Knitting Factory on March 27 and the Key Club on April 5, just finished recording its debut album, due this summer.

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Fast forward

L.A. power pop trio Populuxe celebrates the release of “Deep in an American Evening ...” with a show tonight at the Knitting Factory.... Feb. 22 made you proud to be Australian. Or, in our case, to hear a few. The Viper Room release show for Ben Lee’s “Awake Is the New Sleep” was so sweet it turned the hardest heart spongy.... And later, across town at Spaceland with members of the Vines and Jet in the house, new Epitaph signees Youth Group played an impressive set.... OK Go, the quartet that has relocated from Chicago to L.A., will be test-driving songs from its sophomore album (due this summer) on Friday night at Spaceland.

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-- Kevin Bronson