The seven members of this vibrant pop ensemble are too busy making you dance to write a ballad.

One of the many reasons that Hold On Now, Youngster…, the latest album by Welsh indie pop stars Los Campesinos!, is one of the best albums of the year is that at no point on its 49 minutes do the youngsters, in fact, hold on. Guitarist Neil Campesinos! says that while the band has not officially banned ballads, their everything-at-once, sugar-rush approach doesn’t leave much time for slower numbers.

“If you’re doing pop songs, and you stick in two slow songs and they’re not very good, it can compromise what you are actually going for with the whole record,” he says. “And I know sometimes people will say you need a bit of a breather, but I don’t necessarily agree.”

The band members, who in a Ramones-ian manner have all taken the last name Campesinos!, met when they were students at Cardiff University in Wales. Neil, a longtime fan of groups like Nirvana and Mudhoney, shared a room with singer and glockenspiel player Gareth, took a class with guitarist/main songwriter Tom and lived below drummer Ollie. Violinist Harriet, bassist/singer Ellen and singer/keyboardist/horn player Aleksandra came along just as naturally.

“Ollie and Ellen were playing together,” Neil says, “and it was all ‘oh, we need a violinist.’ And I knew Harriet, and ‘oh we need a singer.’ And Gareth knew Ellen and Aleks. It just all came together.”

The group had come together by March 2006 and played its first gig that May. In June, they recorded a demo in a community center, “just for us to have, really, and to give to friends or whatever,” Neil says.

Crazed and on video: watch a selection of Los Campesinos! music videos, and experience the pop hysteria firsthand.

Two days after the group posted their songs on their MySpace page they received an email from an Australian label that was interested in releasing an album. “That was so ridiculous. We just didn’t know what to say to those people,” Neil recalls. “It just made no sense. It was really exciting, but it didn’t make any sense.”

The group’s cheaply recorded but high-energy demos were hotly traded and discussed on Internet message boards and blogs throughout that summer. By August, the group was invited to open for the Canadian art-pop collective Broken Social Scene. Not only did this significantly bolster the group’s profile, but Scenester Dave Newfeld would go on to produce the band’s 2007 debut EP, Sticking Fingers into Sockets, as well as Hold On Now.

Read the entire inteview with Neil Campesinos!, in which he discusses everything from early influences to how the band got together, what it’s like recording to refusing to write slow songs.Their thrill-a-second live shows and rambunctious early EP amplified the already solid buzz surrounding the group. Rolling Stone selected “You! Me! Dancing!,” an epic tale of nightclub anxiety, as one of the best songs of 2007. Despite the attention, Neil says the group did its best to ignore other people’s opinions, expectations and the threat of a backlash from critics when it came time to record their first full-length album.

“There was that kind of pressure there, but we just kind of didn’t really bother with that. We just thought if we make an album that we are happy with, then it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. Because who cares?” he says. “We just wanted to do something that we were proud of, and if more people like it, then that’s a bonus.”

Neil credits Newfeld with helping the group craft an album that is more consistent and structured than their earlier material. The key, he says, is that the members have learned to play along with each other better while adopting a “less is more” approach to recording the album.

One of the keys to the group’s appeal is the contrast between their bouncy melodies and downcast lyrics.

“It’s just pop music, but Gareth’s lyrics are quite dark, and they do contrast quite deeply sometimes with the music,” Neil says, referring to such lyrical phrases like “I cherish/with fondness/the day before I met you” from My Year in Lists.” “It’s quite interesting to not ask him what they are directly about, because it makes it more exciting to hear and try to guess.”

“I like to not know,” he adds. “I have fun guessing what’s going on in his life.”

Having fun with band mates is not just the group’s mission, Neil says: it’s the only reason why he has band mates in the first place.

“I think the old ‘just having fun with friends’…its such a cliché, and it’s so cheesy, but I think that’s the only reason anyone ever should start a band. You shouldn’t really start a band because…‘aw, we’re going to make money and get famous’ and stuff like that. Because it’ll just cause problems from day one.”

In our rollover graphic, learn about more bands that have utilized clever punctuation in their band names, and we rate their “excitement factor” as musicians.