Klaxons are loving life. And it's easy to see why.

Since we last saw them in Oxford, headlining the NME Awards up at Brookes, they have ripped up Glastonbury, topped the bill at Reading, landed a Mercury Music Prize, and this week stormed the Brits - performing Umbrella in a surreal collaboration with Rihanna.

Oh, and they are also up for no fewer than four awards at this coming week's NME Awards. The awards show at London's O2 Arena - the venue formerly known as the Millennium Dome - will see the lads playing alongside Manic Street Preachers, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party and The Cribs.

It's a hefty line-up, and it calls for a good old warm-up - which the band are doing, right here in little old Oxford. Monday's show, at the Carling Academy, has been one of the best-kept secrets in the venue's, admittedly short, history, and is also a major coup for Cowley-based promoter Alan Day of TCT Music, who landed the band for this exclusive, one-off show.

The gig will once-again see the place packed with euphoric, glowstick wielding nutters - because, wherever Klaxons go, there is a party. Indeed, it was the band's penchant for hedonistic abandon, sirens, psychedelic clothes, and cosmic imagery, that saw their brand of dance-rock dubbed 'nu-rave' - a description first coined, as a joke, by the band's bassist Jamie Reynolds.

Whether there ever really was a nu-rave movement is up for debate. It's true the label has worn a bit thin, and doesn't do any justice to their tough punk-edged guitar rock. Yet, it has stuck.

"Nu-rave is a funny one," says guitarist Simon Taylor.

"Different elements make different amounts of sense. We invented it, but we are not a rave band or a dance band. People aren't coming to hear a dance set, they are coming to a rock concert.

"The whole thing is more confusing than anything. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes."

The key not only to Klaxons domination of indie-rock, and our fascination with them, is that they are so different from everything else around. And it's not just the music. Their lyrics explore the realms of fantasy, spiritualism and the supernatural and borrow from the esoteric works of writers like JG Ballard, which pepper their award-winning debut album Myths Of The Near Future (produced by James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco).

"These writers' books are part of a culture we feel a connection with," says Simon, who originally hails from Stratford-Upon-Avon.

"The last thing we want, is to be stood in front of 1,000 people and no one can even play because they are too wasted!"

Tickets for Monday's show at the Oxford Carling academy have sold out.

Klaxons are up for awards for Best Band, Best Album, Best Dancefloor Filler and Best Video. The results will be announced on Thursday.