Imagine a poll in the mid-'00s on the Band Most Likely to Succeed with, say Modest Mouse, My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes and Kings of Leon.

Is there any chance that Kings of Leon would have come out on top of that?

This was a band of three Bible-bred brothers and one cousin from Franklin, Tenn., that played Southern garage rock with cotton-mouthed vocals. The Kings seemed destined for a long career as a cult band until it started to find a more commercial gear.

Like the Strokes, who broke in England first, the band topped the charts in the U.K. in 2007 with the third album, "Because of the Times," which only reached No. 25 in the States. It laid the foundation for "Only by the Night," sporting a more stadium-sized sound on the hits "Use Somebody" and "Sex on Fire." By the end of the cycle, Kings of Leon had a Top 4 Billboard album, near double-platinum sales, a Grammy and much bigger venues to play.

Drummer Nathan Followill chalks it up to solid mentoring.

"I think the thing that separated the success of this last one from the previous three was, I guess we had become everyone's favorite little, I don't know, indie," he said in a teleconference. "We were kind of everyone's little secret. And then we got a couple of big tours like the U2 tour and Dylan and Pearl Jam. And once we started playing those shows, it kind of put a little fire in our bones to want to get to the point to not only play places that those guys were playing, but the way that their songs still sounded just as good in these big places as they do on the record or in a little club. And I think that just kind of subconsciously crept into our minds. And that kind of had a little to do with the change in direction of our sound."

Kings of Leon is now on tour advancing a fifth album, "Come Around Sundown" that will hit the streets on Oct. 19 (Tuesday's concert at First Niagara Pavilion was canceled due to a scheduling conflict), and while bands in the YouTube era are often hesitant to play unreleased songs, the Followills aren't holding back.

"I think if we were to go out there, play a concert right now and not play some new music, it would feel like we had our hands tied," said singer Caleb Followill. "And I think we would be bored with the show. We didn't want to go back out there and give them 'Only By the Night Tour Part 2.' I think in the old days, when The Beatles would write a song, they would go play it that night. You know, they never held back. And that's how we kind of try to do things. It's inspiring to us to be able to go out there and play a new song ... The crowd response has been unbelievable. We already have people that on certain new songs, there'll be a line, and right when I get to it every time, a whole group of people sing it with me."

In a previous interview, advancing the Bonnaroo festival, the drummer startled fans a bit when he referred to the new album as being "beachy." It turns out that his idea of "beachy" was different from most people's, neither "California Girls" or "California Gurls."

"When I said beachy, I meant a record you take and listen to at the beach, one that has a kind of musical journey, a little bit of everything. I don't know if people expected the new stuff to have the Jamaican tin drum or what. But yeah, I was amazed at how many people jumped on that. But I just think, to me it has kind of a chill, laid-back vibe, something you would just beach out to. My brothers are like 'What the hell, what do you mean beachy?' You know? So they kind of reacted a little bit the same way. But you know what? I'm sticking with beachy, damn it."

Following the success of the last album, there's obviously more pressure this time on the band to keep the momentum going with more singles in the "Use Somebody" vein. That, however, doesn't mean they acknowledge it.

"We've never been one to let that stuff get to us really," Nathan said. "Early on in our career I think it probably hurt us more than it helped us, but we said no to everything that the label wanted us to do, just because we were little [jerks] and young and cocky and really didn't care. But obviously there's that underlying tone of pressure from any corporate side of it, because at the end of the day, it's a business for them. And it's revenue. So you always know that in the back of your mind, they're sitting there with their fingers crossed hoping to God that they can put this new record in and have three 'Use Somebody's' on there. I mean, that's always with any label, with any record. So that's normal and expected. But for the most part we really don't let outside pressure get to us that much, because we're such a tight-knit group -- it's pretty tough to penetrate that little circle as far as outside influence or pressure."

As far as new influences that creep up on "Come Around Sundown," the drummer said the location played a part in the sound as much as anything else.

"I think the biggest influence on this album was probably not even musical. It was probably just the fact that we were doing it in New York City, and we all got places there. And it was kind of a mind trip to go from Nashville, where it's relatively chilled out and there's stuff to do if you want to, but you got to look for it; and then to just transplant ourselves to New York City where it's 24/7, going all the time. That was a pretty neat thing to go through, especially during the creative process of writing and recording a record. And New York City, you get inspired every day by multiple things. I think a lot of our inspiration came just walking from our place to the studio every day and just seeing the different walks of life."

Caleb is known for writing fairly off-the-wall lyrics, and judging by the way he approached "Come Around Sundown," it shouldn't be any different.

"Actually, this album I didn't really write many lyrics," he said. "We would go in there and kind of run through the song a little bit, and I would ad-lib. I would say 75 percent of the lyrics on here were completely ad-libbed. And I had no idea what it was that I was saying, and I had to make sense of it all and kind of piece it together. And so in a way it was a very different album. I would keep saying 'Oh, I'm going to go back and redo the lyrics.' And by the time it came to that, everyone would just say, 'Man, don't touch it. There's something about it.' And I would try to change a certain lyric, and they'd be like, 'Where did that go, we really liked that.'

"And so I think when you listen to that album and dissect it, you'll hopefully be in for a treat. But there are things on there that just came from the heart. And there are things on there that don't make much sense. And there are things on there that maybe one day I'll regret that I said. But I ad-libbed in the moment, and I kept it the way that it was."

One other thing that Kings of Leon fans can expect from the record is a little variety in the instrumentation, with touches of lap steel, trumpet and fiddle.

"A lot of this stuff, I've kind of wanted to do for a while, but we were always a little hesitant," Caleb said. "We didn't want to be that band that went out there and played a concert, and your favorite thing from the album they couldn't pull off live. So I think a lot of these moments. Either we can capture them live, or they're just an added texture. There's nothing really blatant and out front. And there's nothing that we're going to have to run in a loop while we're playing. And I think every one of them really complements the songs and the vibe of what it is that we're doing. And I think having done that, it's really gotten us excited for the future and where we can go as a band and what we can do."

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.