Last week, Angels and Airwaves' Tom DeLonge recounted to Spinner the story of how Bloc Party had been an inspiration to him as he and his bandmates prepped their debut, 'We Don't Need to Whisper.' Earlier this week, prior to leaving for the U.S. for their latest tour, Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke responded to the news.

"It's really nice to hear that," Okereke told Spinner while on a break at a U.K. recording studio. "It's really nice to hear that he's responding to our music in a similar way."

Though he admits he hasn't heard the Angels and Airwaves debut, Okereke said that he took the chance to check out DeLonge's new-ish band at last month's Leeds festival, following the two frontmens' first ever meeting. "I watched them play and I thought they did some really kind of epic soundscapes," he enthused.

Okereke also noted that Angels and Airwaves' plans to make their ensemble more than just a band, and instead a multi-media adventure of sorts, is an inspiring feat. "I think it's great that he has the passion to do [that]," he said. "It's hard in the U.K. -- people get so paranoid about being shot down about expressing any kind of intention or interest, but [Tom] had such a fervor about what he believed in and I thought that was really amazing because it's so rare to see that."

Our little story however, wasn't the first time Okereke heard of DeLonge's love for all things Bloc Party. His own bandmate, guitarist Russell Lissack, carried the news home a year ago after an Angels London gig. "He had a chance to meet them and Russell told me that, yeah, Tom DeLonge's a big fan of what we were doing," he recounted. "I thought that was really humbling to meet someone who had responded to your music in such a way. I'm not really a big fan of American pop-punk type stuff, but we all bizarrely have a copy of the last Blink-182 record. That's weird because we never really agree on what records to like."

The record in question? Blink-182's ballad-y 'I Miss You,' off the band's 2003, self-titled effort. "There's something about that record," Okereke said. "I remember hearing that record when we were recording. We were being driven somewhere and [bassist] Gordon [Moakes] had it on and I just really liked it. I'm not a big fan of that style of music at all, but I went out and I bought it the next day."