Kings Of Convenience Profess Their Love For Feist

When you coo in hushed tones about love and loss, gently plucking at acoustic guitars and in effect, become a purveyor of a soft-pop movement that began with your acclaimed debut album, Quiet Is The New Loud, you tend to appear slight — especially when you're from a country known for its black metal.

Yet even though the Norwegian duo of Erland Oye and Eirik Glambek Boe play songs that are decidedly twee, their soft revolution in the face of Goliaths who push for ear-splitting concert volumes shouldn't be mistaken for timidity. The self-proclaimed Kings Of Convenience write introspective music for non-introverts and they haven't been shy about their love for Broken Social Sceneter-turned-toast-of-Paris, Leslie Feist.

"Me and Erland went to see her show in Berlin where she was living at the time," Boe explains. "She played in a tiny club and it was basically a solo performance. I was just blown away. I've seen so many people play guitar and sing and rarely get so touched. She just had something very special."

So the Kings invited the soon-to-be-celebrated Canadian chanteuse to record vocals for a couple songs on their latest disc, 2004's Riot On An Empty Street, which featured last year's sleeper single "I'd Rather Dance With You." Of course, the record is a quiet riot: light bossanova rhythms and delicate campfire strumming meet dainty piano, elegiac strings and the bare harmonies of Simon And Garfunkel, the band the Kings get compared to the most.

Feist's contributions are on the sprightly "Know-How" and the moody album closer "The Build-Up" on which she graces the tracks' outros with her translucent coo. It's almost a perfect match-up given that Feist's own Let it Die disc and Riot both hold a torch for acoustic soft pop with a hint of danceable soul.

"We're very much in the same frame of mind, musically," Boe says.

Currently the Kings are finishing up a successful North American club tour, which has proved to be challenging considering they're accustomed to playing library-volume shows in European theatres rather than bustling bars. Then they'll hit the drawing boards penning songs for their next album.