When the Beta Band first arrived here four years ago, they landed in the U.S. planning to conduct a tour and to quickly amass a huge fanbase as they had done at home in England. And they did develop a sizeable cult following. But, soon they would realize it was going to take them quite a while to acheive anything more than cult status here in the states.

"It may seem incredibly obvious to say really, but you can tour Britain in five days," says guitarist/vocalist/percussionist Steve Mason, referring to the stark contrasts between touring in the England, and touring in the states.

"You have to realize how much time you have to set aside in order to play in front of everyone who wants to see you in America. So, I guess the more play (in America), the more daunting it becomes. It's the sheer size of it, and the fact that you have to keep going back to stay in people's minds."

Generating that momentum while covering America is difficult, but ever since the band's first gig back in July of1997, the group has been generating a groundswell of fans with it's amalgam of pop, folk, and electronica. Guitars, bass and drums meld seamlessly with loops, samples, and deep burning grooves. This mixture roils together making for a steamy melange of laser-guided melodies for future generations trip-hopping across the moon. But don't let that scare you. The music is actually an accessible foray into the future that a first listen sounds like Tricky and Brian Wilson booked some studio time together.

"I like the Beach Boys," says Mason, fresh from rehearsal at the group's practice space in London. "But if someone was to say that we were influenced by the Beach Boys, to me, it would mean that we copied them to tried to sound like them. We've never wanted to do that. We've never really wanted to sound like the Beach Boys. We wanted to sound like the Beta Band. We're trying to create something totally original like they were at the time."

Original indeed. And that has translated into the respect of their peers. Meeting people is easier now that Radiohead handpicked the Beta Band to open for them during last summer's Amnesiac tour. In fact, Radiohead has admitted they were "going through a Beta Band phase" during the Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions. A huge compliment coming from a band who arguably delivered the Revolver of the '90s with the release of OK Computer. But the chances are the first time you heard the Beta Band wasn't on the radio, nor opening for Radiohead, but in the theater. Actor/screenwriter John Cusack championed the group when he squeezed them into a scene in the screenplay he wrote for the film, "High Fidelity."

The scene goes like this: To accentuate his indie cred, Cusack's character, the compulsively neurotic owner of a small record store in Chicago, slides in the Beta Band's "Three EPs" album proclaiming to his clerks that he "will now sell five copies of the Beta Band." The band's laconic pop hit, "Dry The Rain" then plays over the stereo as customers mill about in the store. Score one for the Beta's.

The group's first full-length follow-up to the "Three EPs" was titled simply, "The Beta Band." A disappointment to the band, critics and some of its fans, the Beta's returned to the studio to record its latest effort, "Hotshots II" with renewed purpose.

The album, The Beta Band, is a contentious issue, and Mason bristles when asked about it. "To be honest, I kinda stopped talking about that record quite a while ago. It came out two or three years ago now, and I really couldn't be bothered talking about it, to be honest."

But this is going somewhere and he's patient. How did the band refocus for "Hotshots II?"

"The main thing with the 'Hotshots II' was that, first of all, we were glad to be given the chance to make another record after the first album. We wanted to make an album that was more compact. A bit more immediate and less sprawling like the last one. And also try to get everyone in the band involved in the creative process. To have a bit more fun in the studio, and also to be a lot more prepared, because weren't prepared at all to the last one."

So the band was rushed into the studio for the last record? "No, we were just lazy," deadpans Mason. "And probably overconfident."

Well, the group has redeemed itself with Hotshots II, and is looking forward to the coming tour.

The Beta's have long been known for lavish stage productions, which ostensibly are multimedia presentations — music, light show, and film.

Now they are thinking about changing some things around this time out.

"To be honest, I've just come out of a meeting about this stage thing," says Mason. "We are concentrating more on slides this time. We're going to try and bounce slides off of us. We're not exactly sure how it's going to work. We haven't had a chance to on proper pre-production. It's going to be kind of pay-as-you-go type thing.

"It might work, and it might not," he says with a laugh. Which is a perfectly Beta way of approaching things in a world ruled by the Alphas.