By Lauren Sloat
New Music Nation Contributor

You know you’ve made it as a rock star when you’re getting up at the crack of dawn to gear up for go-kart racing with The Fray (a small band you may have heard of, who, AHEM, only have the best-selling digital album of all time). For the five members of Britain’s The Feeling, that’s just one way to pass the time with their tour-mates before beginning the next big British invasion later this month.

The five twenty-somethings just released their first full-length album in the US on February 27, and the hits on 12 Stops And Home have made them the most played band on UK radio in 2006. How will they work their charms on US audiences? With sheer harmonic choruses and hook-heavy pop gold. And some sweet suits.

“It would be incredible if we [realize the same success in the United States]. It’s an incredibly big country,” says bassist Richard Jones, who is also the husband to Brit pop star and Victoria Beckham rival Sophie Ellis-Bextor. “I think pop music is universal, especially if we get a lot of radio support.” DJs can’t ignore the quintet for long; The Feeling have racked up armies of fans stateside using good ol’ grassroots methods like message boards and MySpace, where they have nearly 62,000 friends.

Part of how they’ve realized such great success in the UK, besides being talented musicians with music degrees, is by carving out their own niche with the reclamation of “pop” music.

“For the past 15 years, pop music has been used as a category, but we think of it more as a general term for radio music,” says Jones, who mentions Britney Spears as one “artist” who would be considered “pop” under recent and misguided connotations. “We’re not really a rock or an indie or a dance band,” he adds. “We’re just guys who get together and make music.”

They are embracing the idea of “pop” in all its sunny, mainstream glory, often citing Supertramp and The Beatles as their greatest influences. “The Beatles were the first to write their own songs. Before they came along, record companies would give songs to the artists. They sort of invented what pop music is.” It’s hardly a stretch to compare these five, good-looking, suit-wearing, melody-singing guys to the ones who first invented the genre, but can they have the same impact? Maybe if they can make it once again “cool” to like a top 40 hit. We may already be seeing early evidence of this phenomenon; their first single “Sewn” has appeared both as an iTunes weekly free download (hello, commercialism!) and on the always underground “One Tree Hill” soundtrack (lo, the indie obscurity!).

The change has been a long time coming. The Feeling have been playing together in various configurations since meeting in music college 10 years ago, but they didn’t really feel like they had “made it” until late last year. “This time last year, we played gigs to sometimes only four people” says Jones. “Now, we sell out to audiences of 4,000.” Their transition to success became especially clear this past August, just two months after the UK debut of their album. “We were playing to a crowd of 10,000 and I just thought, ‘Wow, where did all these people come from?’”

The Feeling kick off their tour March 17 in Denver and will end up at Coachella on April 29. They will play on the same day as Rage Against the Machine, a band that betrays the giddy fan inside even a budding rock star like Jones. “I’m really excited for that,” he admits. “We grew up with that band.”

Listen to The Feeling/Buy Music