Of course they're awesome, they're the Foo Fighters, after all. And the Dave Grohl-led group has a long and storied MTV Video Music Awards history.

Prior to this year, the band has 14 nominations to their credit. In 1996, their "Big Me" was up for five Moonmen and they walked with the Best Group Video honor. Much deserved, mind you, because of its most excellent send-up of classic Mentos commercials, not to mention Dave's braids. (Watch it after the jump.)

Since then, despite netting two nominations in 1997 for "Monkey Wrench," three in 1998 for "Everlong," two in 2000 for "Learning to Fly" and two in 2005 for "Best of You," they haven't been able to take home the hardware again.

Will that change this year as they go up against Paramore, Slipknot, Linkin Park and Fall Out Boy for the Best Rock Video honor? They've got the Sam Brown-directed "The Pretender" in the running, so it's entirely possible that they will finally add another Moonman to the shelf so that the first one will finally have someone to canoodle with on long winter nights.

The Foo Fighters have also been VMA performers a few times. The first time, the band performed two songs during the 1997 VMA pre-show atop the Radio City Music Hall marquee in New York. Famously, guitarist Pat Smear announced after the band's performance of "Monkey Wrench" that he was leaving the group and introduced his replacement, Franz Stahl, who performed "Everlong" with the band.

In 2005 performed on the the MTV Europe Music Awards, and they did that again in 2007, a show that they also co-hosted with the one-and-only Snoop Dogg.

Last year also saw the band slay in Las Vegas during the VMAS. They held a party in one of the Fantasy Suites at the Palms that was nothing short of kick-ass awesome. They played with the likes of Gnarls Barkley frontman Cee-Lo, Queens Of The Stone Age mastermind Josh Homme, members of Eagles Of Death Metal, Mastodon, System Of A Down's Serj Tankian and iconic Motorhead frontman Lemmy. Oh yeah, also on hand was Smear, who sat in with the band for (and here's where it really comes full circle, people) a performance of ... wait for it ... wait for it ... "The Pretender." Ahhhhhh ...

Below find the Foo Fighters' "Big Me" music video, that performance of "The Pretender" from the 2007 MTV VMA Fantasy Suites, as well as this year's nominated video for the same. (Watch all of the Foo Fighters live performances we've got -- and there's a lot of them -- right here.) And don't forget to watch the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, Sept. 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT to see if they're able to nab another one of our trophies.