Well, perhaps that doesn't apply to absolutely every guitar band, but as Luke Pritchard from the Kooks reveals, it was on a bleary night in the city of angels that he discovered his very own saintly guardian was none other than Blaine from the Mystery Jets.

"Blaine saved my life in LA. It’s true!" he laughs, before explaining exactly how his continued existence on this earth is all down to a scruffy musician from Eel Pie Island. "The Mystery Jets are our mates and we went to see them play a show when we were all in LA. Afterwards, outside the gig, I thought it would be a really good idea to jump on top of a van and start singing Nina Simone songs. All these other people got up and joined in, a friend of ours and some girls, so we were all on top of this van. We were making a really friendly noise, mind you, we weren't smashing it or anything - but the cops turned up and were none too happy about it."

At this point Luke's voice changes to a stern American tone, Terminator-style, as he impersonates his interrogators shouting at them to "get the fuck down."

"So we got down and we were just stood there, rabbit in the headlights style," he continues, "and one guy asked for our ID so we showed him, to prove we were over 21, and then this one cop turned around and spat in front of me. He properly spat, and I just went, "Mate, do you know you can spread tuberculosis doing that? It's disgusting." And that was it - he just went mental."

An almighty row ensued, with Luke still not realising quite the depth of the hot water he might have got into. One suspects that a drop too much alcohol may have been involved in the singer's decision-making that night. But then, just in the nick of time, Blaine appeared from inside the building - and swiftly explained to the cops that the van was his. "He told the coppers that he was totally fine with it, that he didn't mind us jumping on his band's van, even hinting that we did it all the time. The cops were like "Are you sure? This is a federal offence." But he just spoke to them with such authority that they eventually let us go."

A night in the cells with the LAPD might have caused more than the blues - Luke would also have missed the band's flight home the next day, and possibly jeopardised his right to return to the USA on future tours. "Afterwards I turned to Blaine and was like, "Man, I'm so glad that was your van," and Blaine just goes, "but it wasn't our van." Which seemed like the most hilarious thing in the world at the time. Until the next morning when I woke up and was like, I am such a dick. You just don't talk back like that to American policemen."

Rock and roll indeed but Luke seems to need a bit of that youthful folly, as he's a self-confessed worrier. The Kooks' debut album, 'Inside In/Inside Out', trades in paranoia and unease; ennui seems to nibble away at Luke's young soul. "I just worry about everything," he confesses. "This morning I woke up at eight, we'd only got in at six am, but I was up and awake, running through everything in my head. I'm quite paranoid definitely, and frustrated a lot of the time."

A recent trip to Mexico to shoot part of the video for their forthcoming single, 'She Moves In Her Own Way', should have been blissful, but ended up causing the guys a fair amount of discomfort, as filming took place in a red light district. "Tijuana is a fucked-up place," recalls Luke unhappily. "It was pretty embarrassing actually, we were filming at night and there were all these people there trying to go about their lives. Our song was playing really loudly and we had to walk down this street, but there were girls doing business in front of us and we really felt we should't be there. One guy came up and shouted at us, asked us what we were doing there. We were stepping into the third world - it just didn't seem right."

But were there not at least a few young Mexicans excited about seeing a pack of sexy, English rock'n'rollers on their street? "No!" insists Luke, "we haven't released anything over there, nobody had a clue who we were. There were just angry people everywhere we went." The Mexican trip did provide at least one moment of fun though: the chance to go to the beach and bury guitarist Hugh in the sand, and then leave him there. This proved enormously amusing for everybody apart from Hugh. "Yeah, he was over the moon about us doing that to him," Luke fibs.

You get a sense that Luke is one of those people who starts life old and grows younger. Perhaps this comes down to having a lot on his shoulders at a young age - his musician father died when Luke was just three years old, and he was later to lose his stepfather too. After this he was sent to the progressive boarding school Bedales, where he would encounter a whole new set of rules about life. "It was weird," he explains, "I felt a bit out of place there cos I'd been to state school before. Everyone at Bedales is the son of a record producer or the daughter of a billionaire. It's kind of freaky - but great. When I look back I think what amazing friends I made, so that's really cool, but there was a time when... there were a lot of beatings going on."

Beatings? In a school notorious for its interest in the arts and luvviedom? "Yeah, where I used to sleep, I was 13 or 14 and in a dorm with guys who were much older. They'd do things like, wait til you were lying in bed and then come and strip all your bedclothes away, and then draw a line around your body in pen. Then they'd leave you, saying they'd be back in a few hours and if you'd moved an inch from the line... And of course you would move, because it's impossible not to, so they'd come back and grab a hockey stick and - you know..." He stops. It sounds pretty grim, but Luke begins to laugh at the memory. "It wasn't severe beatings," he adds hastily "none of that character-building shit. How did we get onto this subject anyway? It's hilarious!" After Bedales, Luke went to the Brit School of Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, aged 16, and began to understand how desperate some people's race for fame can be. He watched his fellow students place sucess and stardom above everything else in life. It's something he also sees nowadays on shows such as X-Factor, although their contestants don't even share the talent of his college contemporaries. "I find those programmes quite sad and distressing. People get exploited and basically laughed at - it might be fun to watch but those contestants build all their hopes up only to get them smashed. It's pretty fucking horrible - people making money out of other people’s misfortune."

Luke prides himself on writing songs from the heart, and he and his bandmates claim it doesn't matter how trivial the subject is. If the song itself matters to you, then you can sing it with pride and feeling. So keen are they on doing things the genuine way that they recorded their album on tape, which had to be brought in from overseas as it’s so rarely used in this country these days. Presumably, the Kooks think it's better to work from the bottom up like they have done, playing gig after gig, rehearsal after rehearsal, until a band gets good enough to attract a record label, as they did with Virgin, who were impressed with their loyal Brighton fanbase - or do they?

"Well I don't think it’s easier or necessarily better that way, no," Luke claims. "You do it the way that you do it, whatever's best for you will work for you. It's just that the TV route seems to be for people who are very desperate and allow themselves to be moulded by that culture, which is completely separate from anything we would do. Obviously there's never going to be any decent music coming out of that place, it's always going to be laughable music."

I point out that Will Young has done alright for himself. "Yeah but he's still shit! It's not like you're gonna put on his record at home are you? He has used them rather than letting them use him, which is something, but he still doesn’t have an ounce of soul in him. I wouldn't care if I thought he had at least one good song, but he doesn't."

At least other forms of music are in a healthier state right now. Luke is thrilled about the kicking indie scene that Britain is once again enjoying, and reckons it might well have topped its predecessors. "It's pretty damn good right now, isn’t it?" he enthuses. "Music's better than it has been for ages. It's better than Britpop. Well I mean, there's bands I like and there's bands I hate, but still..." He trails off here, having learned not to engage in too much inter-band bitching. His comments to one journalist about the Kaiser Chiefs came out sounding overly negative in print, and led to the Leeds band ditching the Brighton boys from a tour support slot. Luke learned the hard way to mind what he says.

An equally tricky subject with the media has been his relationship with a certain Katie Melua, whom he met at the Brit school and then went out with for three years. Their relationship is over, but it’s something Luke, who clearly loved her deeply, feels awkward talking about. Not that that stopped Simon Amstell from putting him through a cringeworthy series of questions about her on Popworld, most memorably, "Were you never tempted to call her Katie Manure?" Schoolboy humour, but the discomfort on Luke's face made for unbearable telly. For a frontman, Luke doesn't always seem to enjoy being the centre of attention.

"I suppose that’s true," he agrees, "I hadn't really thought about that but it's true actually. Because of that thing with Katie, a lot was written about that, when actually, I just find it really weird. You see all that stuff in the papers and, I dunno..." Once again he trails off, struggling to find something he is happy adding to the column inches already filled with the subject. "I'm just starting to get comfortable with it," he adds, unconvincingly.

Much of the album's inspiration has been attributed to their relationship ending, and you can see why. With nearly all of the songs mentioning a nameless "her" or "she", they offer ripe pickings for tabloid-style speculation. "Take me back to the place where I loved this girl for all time, why must life take away every good thing one at a time," sings Luke on 'I Want You', perhaps also referring to the deaths of loved ones. There are also racier moments - on 'Sofa Song', the catcy chorus goes "And I will do my best /just to get under her dress," while 'Time Awaits' is graced with the punchline "She tore those panties down, and loved me wetter." However, these last two songs were both co-written by bassist Max Rafferty, and it's unclear who is responsible for which line. But one song that is definitely close to Luke's heart is the new single 'She Moves In Her Own Way'. Max also shares the lyric-writing credits on that one, but Luke explains that he didn't realise what he was saying until after he'd written it.

"Sometimes you've got an idea that you know you want to write about, but other times you don't know why you’re writing something. You don't realise until way after, when you go fuck, that makes sense now, I can see why I would have been saying that at that moment in my life. It’s happened loads of times, and 'She Moves In Her Own Way' was probably one of those songs." It’s a song about watching a girl become successful, and about her in turn watching him. It comes across as something of a gentle morality tale, with him warning her that what matters is not the superficial things like her make-up, or how she shapes up "to these tiresome paper dreams." It also shows gratitude and humility - "she came to my show / just to hear about my day," he sings, sounding genuinely glad for the companionship.

Friendship is something Luke doesn't take lightly. When hard living took its toll on his bandmate Max, Luke wondered how they could play tour dates without him - although they did. And it's not just musicians from his own band who make up his social circle. As well as the Mystery Jets, whom Luke really admires not only for their songs, but for the quality of musicianship, the Kooks are close to the band Larrikin Love, who will be coming with them on tour this summer. They're not too sure about being part of any perceived "indie" scene, though, as Luke explains. "We've got various friends in London who are in bands, but it’s not like a conscious network of bands all hanging out together. In fact we haven't been in England that much lately, which is annoying cos we'd like to get involved in the music scene more. One of the shittest things about being in a band - in fact it's the only shit thing about being in a band - is that you can't ever go to see bands that you like play, cos the chances are you're playing that day too." A case in point is Coco Rosie, a female duo whom Luke has longed to see play live for some time, but who have consistently evaded his timetable. Luck has continued to escape him on this - the duo's next English gig coincides with the Kooks being in New York. Luke makes a joke about changing their schedule so he can fly back to London just for that one day.

There's one schedule Luke won't be changing though - and that’s an extra special tour of the British coast this autumn. Towns such as Torquay, Skegness and Blackpool will all be graced by a band whose frizzy hairstyles look set to grow even frizzier, as the wet salty winds have do battle with their curls. Nonetheless, it’s something that Luke is particularly excited about. Given that the band formed on the south coast, while studying at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music in 2003, the beach has always played some relevance in their history - their album even opens with drummer Paul Garred's homage to falling in love beside the waves, 'Seaside'. It was their manager’s idea to quit touring all the obvious venues and find a more imaginative way of presenting the gigs, but the lads jumped at the chance. "It's gonna be wicked," says Luke, "we're playing on the end of piers and on a beach. We’re gonna have a party at the end of every night, have a barbecue and just see who comes down. We can't wait."