It was incredibly exciting to know that we’d finally found the right person.”Sleepover rehearsals at Berg’s house became a regular fixture at weekends. Soon came tentative local gigs, and, when those went well, The Like played further shows in New York during their Christmas holidays. When Z sat down on her bed with her guitar and played us “Twenty-Seven Days”, we were like, ‘Wow! That’s a real song! Let’s set up our instruments!’ We were there until midnight, I think. We thought, ‘Ooh! How mysterious! She’s just called Z!’”After we’d tracked her down we all hooked up on Instant Messenger”, Thomas continues, “and a few days later me and Charlotte turned up on Z’s doorstep all giggly and everything. Charlotte and I were in a school-band together, and friends had told us about this strange songwriter-girl they called ‘The Letter’. When the trio formed in Los Angeles in 2001, their average age was 16.

Well-connected they may be, but mere nepotism doesn’t explain the quality of The Like’s indie-pop debut, Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking? Berg’s dreamy, “boys and books”-obsessed songs join the dots between The Bangles and The Sundays with some style, and for all her brattish demeanour, Froom has a McCartney-esque way with a melodic bass-line.
“Our dads do know each other, it’s true”, concedes the more amiable and enthused Thomas when pressed, “but we didn’t really form the group through them. “Boring territory”, she snaps, her nasal Californian whine cutting me off mid-sentence. “I’m sick of being asked about our stupid parents.”

For the record, The Like are the progeny of the A&R man Tony Berg, the record producer Mitchell Froom and Elvis Costello’s drummer Pete Thomas. The frivolous mood evaporates somewhat when I ask the barefoot, mini-skirted, similarly feather-strewn Froom about the bandmates’ famous fathers. We don’t relate to that; we love dancing and having something to groove to. This is what unites us as a band.”‘Elnar’ is out on 3 April on Wikkid. In a west London hotel, Tennessee Thomas, the drummer with The Like, is literally spitting feathers.

Together with the singer/guitarist Z Berg and the bassist Charlotte Froom, she has just engaged in a cotton-ripping pillow-fight for the benefit of a NME snapper. There’s little peace or unity there – and fun? They’ve never heard the word. “‘Elnar’ means ‘fire’ in Arabic, and it symbolises that lives are being burnt and their families are being torn apart.”A?’s idea of cultural fusion hails from the United Kingdom, specifically from acts such as Transglobal Underground and Fun-Da-Mental in the early Nineties “We feel closer to the English scene than the French scene. “S?rine is trying to understand how a foreigner can be accepted, because in France if you don’t drink wine people ask why, even if you’re a Muslim. It feels uncomfortable when everyone is judging what you’re doing.”On the new album, the edgy title track tackles the horror of war, with lyrics such as “one third of the world doesn’t care about what the Third World puts up with” “It’s for all the people suffering in Iraq,” Naufalle says. “She involves herself much more personally in her lyrics, whereas I tend to talk about social issues; about chronicling life in the West, and what’s happening in Iraq,” say Naufalle.”On Elnar there’s a song ‘Dioud’, about integration,” he says.