Cold War Kids Embrace Their Fame on New EP

It's hard to believe it's been almost four years since Long Beach, Calif. natives Cold War Kids generated murmurs with their bevy of EPs and debut record, 'Robbers and Cowards.' After becoming world famous and releasing last year's lesser hyped full-length, 'Loyalty to Loyalty,' the quartet returns to their roots with a brand new EP dropping today entitled 'Behave Yourself.'

"We wanted to do something quickly and that pretty much flied," lead singer Nathan Willett tells Spinner about the decision to release the new EP. "Our second record, we like it, but don't love it. I think we wanted to do something fun and quick."

New songs 'Santa Ana Winds' and 'Audience of One' should satiate fans until their third record is finished. "We're working on a full-length and will be working on it for another month or so, the writing aspect of it," explains Willett. "We'll be in the studio with a guy called Jacquire King. He's an awesome producer. He's done a wide range of things: the Norah Jones record ['The Fall'] and the last Kings of Leon record ['Only by the Night']. He's all over the place with the rock genre. We think it's gonna be sweet."

The guys plan on only playing five shows in January in support of the EP, including a show in Alaska because they've never been there before. The reasoning behind the brief tour is to allow time to focus on writing and recording the new record, not to tour the world right now. So if you live in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A and Anchorage, consider yourself lucky.

When asked if he's learned to embrace the band's unexpected success, Willett says, "Everybody is completely daunted by it. I think if you're lucky like we were, we went in and made our first record without thinking about it at all and being totally unaware. I think with the second record, it was the whole thing of do you kinda embrace it or do you just continue to be unaware of it? There's the side of pretending that you're unaware that can screw you. We learned to embrace it after that second record and I think in the sense that's what the EP is about: looking back and seeing where we actually came from."

Willett and band have certainly come a long way since bloggers introduced the world to hit 'Hang Me Out to Dry', but the Kids are counting on more prosperity in the new year. "With the ways that we need to evolve, I think we're going to make some great strides with this record," Willett says. "A lot of things are going to open up to us. I think this year is going be the year that we figure out the meaning of life."