Annie performs at the Icelandic Airwaves Festival
Photo: MTV News

REYKJAVÍK, Iceland — For 360 days a year, Iceland is home to just 290,000 people, three massive glaciers and legions of Björk fans, but for five days each year, the capital city opens its indie-rock heart for the über-hip Iceland Airwaves music festival.

For its seventh-annual incarnation, which ended Sunday, Iceland Airwaves heated up the chilly city with a sultry new theme: the pursuit of sexiness. Most of the more than 140 bands that played this year — including Juliette and the Licks, Fiery Furnaces, Junior Senior, the (International) Noise Conspiracy and the Zutons — eagerly embraced that theme with electric live shows that packed around 4,000 people into six main venues and a series of smaller clubs.

For five days, bands mingled with fans and the press while watching underground acts, enjoying a drink and grabbing the late-night Icelandic "delicacy," pylsurs (a.k.a. hot dogs). Airwaves is beloved for its late-night shows (some bands don't take the stage until 2:30 a.m.) and an intimate atmosphere that allows fans to race past Björk on their way into a club, or chat up Juliette Lewis at the Saturday afternoon "hangover party."

Denmark's Junior Senior were fixtures at the festival, showing up at different venues every night. During their own set, the pair got the packed room moving with songs like their 2003 hit, "Move Your Feet." The previous evening, platinum-tressed Norwegian dance-club sensation Annie, known for her sugary hit "Chewing Gum," donned an '80s-inspired off-the-shoulder top and stretch pants to perform tracks off her 2004 debut, Anniemal.

Juliette and the Licks headlined on Friday evening, with Lewis — clad in a skin-tight white shirt and equally clingy white pants — piquing the crowd's excitement with her thrashing, Iggy Pop-inspired movements and crowd-surfing stints. The Zutons' diminutive saxophonist, Abi Harding, gave Lewis some stiff competition in the category of favorite female musician, though, captivating the audience at the Reykjavík Art Museum (formerly a prison).

Icelandic acts like the keyboard-happy Apparat Organ Quartet, rockers Singapore Sling, and Gus Gus (who played the very first Airwaves festival), shone. Brooklyn's underground success story Clap Your Hands Say Yeah drew one of the festival's biggest crowds with lines wrapping around the city's central square, while fellow Brooklynites New Radio, who've yet to appear on the radar Stateside, made a roomful of new fans with their alternately sweet and rocking cello-driven sound and singer Atarah Valentine's androgynous cabaret-inspired style.

An opportunity for Iceland to make its mark on the musical map, the Airwaves festival kicked off in 1999 at an airplane hangar, with acid jazz/ dance-music group Thievery Corporation as one of the featured performers. In its early years, the festival functioned as more of an industry showcase but has since become a way to introduce Icelandic bands to the world, and international bands to Icelanders.

The festival has drawn acts like the Bravery, the Hives, the Flaming Lips, Keane, the Shins, Sahara Hotnights, TV on the Radio, Fatboy Slim and Citizen Cope to the country's most densely populated city (about 170,000 people live there).

The main event that sets Iceland Airwaves apart from all other underground music festivals is its annual hangover party, which finds fans and artists leaving the confines of the city to lounge in the country's famous Blue Lagoon — a warm, milky-blue geothermal pool — and listen to a set by Icelandic DJ Hermigervill. Try finding that at New York's CMJ Music Marathon.

For more sights and stories from concerts around the country, check out MTV News Tour Reports.

• Icelandic Airwaves Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland 10.19-23.05

• Juliette & the Licks
• The Zutons
• Junior Senior
• The (International) Noise Conspiracy

Zutons (file)
Photo: Appio

While so many indie bands thrive off the fanfare surrounding them, England's quirky retro-rockers the Zutons attribute their success to a lack of hype.

"We're not a hyped band," singer Dave McCabe insists. "We're not like 'this is the band for 2005 in America' like other bands like Jet or Franz Ferdinand. I don't think it's a bad thing if it happens, it's just not our band. People feel closer to our music; maybe they feel they discovered it themselves and weren't led to it."

Hyped or not, a buzz built around the Zutons, which earned them a solid following, slots touring with the Thrills, R.E.M. and Keane, and a nomination for the Brit Award for Best British Breakthrough Act. Now, the Liverpudlian band that had its frantic rock track "Pressure Point" featured in a television spot for Levi's jeans is feeling the pressure to deliver a second album that will have the same impact as the first.

"We've been recording [demos] on a MiniDisc," said McCabe, "and I was listening back to the recording, and instantly you just notice that you've got to make a couple of changes because they don't sound nice. It's just a case of speeding the process up, because you got 20 years to do your first album and just six weeks to do your second one."

The Zutons' debut, Who Killed ... the Zutons, has only been out in the U.S. since October, but it hit shelves in the U.K. six months earlier, so despite the fact that they could probably still tour the States behind this album for a while, guitarist Boyan Chowdhury said starting on a new project is "just a natural thing."

Still, the Zutons — rounded out by bassist Russell Pritchard, drummer Sean Payne, and the lone female, saxophonist Abi Harding, who "keeps you on your best behavior," according to Chowdhury — have no intention of rushing the process.

"It's not going to turn into a five-year waiting thing," said McCabe, "but you never know if it could be this year or the start of next year, because you've got to get it right. There's no point putting out a second record that you know is not as good as the first."

Stateside fans who haven't gotten enough of the swirling, saxophone-driven, raucous and often silly rock sounds of the first album can expect some of that same attitude on the second, but the band has no plans to re-create its debut.

"I think the second album will be a moving-on thing," said McCabe. "It'll have the trademark things, but it's definitely going to move on. We're not going to be like a lot of bands where they put out an album soon after and it's kind of like the first one."

McCabe said he hopes the band's varying styles and energetic live show will keep fans coming back for more. "I'm glad we're not one of those bands where you can turn off and say, 'I've seen their gig already.' I think people kind of discover the Zutons, which I think is an honest thing these days."

• The Zutons

The Zutons (file)
Photo: Epic

The most gushed-about current British band sounds absolutely nothing like a band from the U.K. Or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. In fact, if you gave them a listen, you'd probably pick up some New Orleans boogie — a la Dr. John — and some Southern-fried guitar rock, kinda like Lynyrd Skynyrd. With maybe a little bit of Californian psychedelia thrown in for good measure.

Meet the Zutons: the greatest American rock and roll band from Liverpool, England.

"I also like a lot of the hip-hop stuff. Like the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication, I think that's sort of a pinnacle of doing whatever you want in music," said drummer Sean Payne. "And the same with Beck. They all seem to do whatever they want, and you know it's them doing it, whatever the style it is."

"Which is strange, because in the U.K., we get lumped in with the Strokes and the Libertines, bands like that," added bassist Russell Pritchard. "But we don't have a 'look,' so often we'll be doing a photo shoot and they'll be like, 'You have to look good for this one.' And we're really uncomfortable with that."

That discomfort shouldn't be surprising. In person, the Zutons look nothing like the Strokes; they're more shaggy hair and hemp necklaces than vintage suits and white belts. And they lack the volatile, drug-addled lunacy of the Libertines: The most scandalous thing about the Zutons happened last month, when they were forced to cancel their U.K. tour because Payne fell ill. They're essentially four slightly unkempt, somewhat geeky, supremely nice lads (and one lass, saxophonist Abi Harding) who don't really fit in anywhere.

And that's abundantly clear on their debut album, Who Killed The Zutons?, an ode to the swampy, sweaty, voodoo rock and roll that populated the airwaves in the late '60s and early '70s. It's got red-hot sax playing, plenty of mentions of hard-lovin' women and hard-workin' men, and even a song called "Zuton Fever" that features the lyric, "Oh doctor, doctor help and let me know/ If you can find a cure or antidote." In short, it's a silly, unabashed good time.

"Music should be fun! Chuck Berry was just about the most fun thing going," Pritchard said.

"Even stuff like Nirvana, even though it's a down kind of thing, it's still fun," Payne added. "You listen to it and say 'Okay, we can jump about to this and mosh to it.' It's got a lot of energy. And after you listen to it, you're buzzin' off it."

That attitude, coupled with their retro leanings and geographic location, is party of the reason that the Zutons are often mentioned in the same breath as fellow Liverpudlians like the Coral and the Stands. They're all slightly skewered, left-of-center pop oddities, and while 99 percent of all acts chafe at the phrase "being part of a scene," the Zutes actually don't seem to mind the comparisons. In fact, they seem to find strength in numbers.

"In Liverpool, most 16-year-olds with a guitar, they get their Jimi Hendrix, their Pink Floyd and the Who, and then they discover Captain Beefheart, and they just go totally that way for a while," Pritchard said. "And with bands like us, the Stands and the Coral, we were all around at the same time, and that's what we did."

"I think we're all united by the love of diversity and pushing away the mainstream," Payne added. "Everyone says they hate pop music and never listen to the radio, so it's all about finding the weirdest kind of music you can be into."

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