Three years after the band catapulted to fame with their whistling anthem Young Folks, the band is hopscotching the states for a brief tour promoting its just released album, Living Thing before returning this summer to open for the influential 80s' New Wave band Depeche Mode.

The night before, after performing in Milwaukee they partied at a private club where did the "Chicken Dance" to gain entry. "That's a fun little city,"' Morén says of Milwaukee.

The band performs tomorrow in New York (4/29), then in Brooklyn (4-30), Philly (5-1) and Washington, D.C. (5-2) before heading home to Sweden.

"Especially now that I travel a lot, I love to come home,'' Moren says during a brief conversation stolen from him after last week's show in Chicago. He admits "I miss my girlfriend and I miss my little dog." The girl is "Christine"; the dog is part Cocker Spaniel.


This is the tenth year that Morén, Björn Yttling and John Eriksson have performed together and experience and success have made touring easier. " The shows get more fun because you're better. You get used to the touring life," he said. When he first started out, he "couldn't sleep, couldn't relax" while on the road, Moren says.

It's clear he's graduated from anxiety as I interrupt him reading the local free paper on the tour bus shortly before hitting the stage. And he generously indulges me in a chat only minutes from exiting the stage.


I tell him that a local reviewer said the band's breakout "Young Folks'' had one of the best baselines of the last two decades; he seems nonplussed. "It's a good baseline. I haven't really thought about it,'' he said. "You just want to make more music."

That's music on their terms, thank you very much. Last year, on the heels of their hugely successful third album, Writer's Block, which Rolling Stone ranked as among the top albums of 2007, the band released their fourth and entirely instrumental album entitled, Seaside Rock, which Peter has said "was an important record to make" because it helped the band find its bearings.

"Success was a big change for us, because before it was more like a hobby,'' Morén told Exclaim. " And then suddenly it became your day job and you actually made some money, and then you have to see the other guys all the time rather then in your free time. It was a lot of tension, it wasn't all happy times. And that's why it was really good for us to go into the studio and do this album. It was almost therapeutic."

Their latest offering, Living Thing, has been interpreted from everything as an "uneasy, bracingly honest soundtrack to life after fame" (Spin, 4 stars), to "border[ing] on the narcoleptic," to "more of what made Young Folks (2006) an international hipster anthem: infectious electro -- acoustic tunes framing tales of romance and its discontents." (Rolling Stone, 4 stars).

But whether it sounds different or more of the same, Morén admits the trio is a "very eclectic band…We always want to do something different than the last time around."

Opening for Depeche Mode fits that bill. The band is "excited and a bit scared…I think we're pretty similar in a way. I'm not sure if they think so, but we're really excited and flattered." As for the future, Morén said that the band plans on making more "punky...power pop."

Harder, faster, better? Can't wait.