PLAYING New York and touring across Europe is a dream, but for Kerr Okan of The LaFontaines, the noise of a home crowd is still the biggest lure.

With a second album on the cards frontman Kerr is preparing for an assault on the year, and it’ll be starting in Glasgow.

“The last three years we’ve played our first gig in Queen Margaret’s Union, this is the fifth time we’ve played there,” he explains.

“The first three times were atrocious. I tried doing some patter, it wasn’t going down very well. We wanted to break that spell.”

The Motherwell band, named after the famous American voice actor, have hit success with their own take on a rock and rap hybrid.

Nowadays fans and critics alike are both vocal in their praise of the group’s live performances, something Kerr is able to acknowledge.

“We are very much a live band. It plays to the crowd very well. We have the best time when we play, and it’s very obvious that it resonates with the audience.

“When things don’t go right I notice it, because it’s out of the norm.

“You can’t get away with playing over a backing track. There’s something that gets lost. You need to be playing with your instruments.

“The main thing is you need the songs down, and then you can turn it up a bit.”

Kerr has played some major gigs, including the Barras, 2014’s T in the Park, and in New York as part of Scotland week.

The band also joined rapper George Watsky on his European tour, and, although Kerr knows how cliché it sounds, he still rates his home crowd the highest.

“There’s no better place to play in the world than Glasgow, for us. It’s where we had our biggest headline, and that was the best night of our lives as a band,” he says.

“Being on a Monday night won’t make much difference to people from Glasgow, it might as well be on a Saturday.”

On that 2014 tour with Watsky the group were also joined by Anderson .Paak, whose breakout album ‘Malibu’, released last year, earned the American artist two Grammy nominations.

It’s a turn of events that seems a little surreal to Kerr.

He explains: “Where he is now, that’s inspirational. I remember we were talking in Berlin, he asked if we had any Euros. You’re asking the wrong guys I said.”

Although The LaFontaines value their artistic independence highly, Kerr isn’t pretentious about gaining wider recognition.

“If someone phoned me up for a Grammy I’d say yes, but the mainstream… the minute you start chasing that you instantly lose something.

“Don’t try to write a song for radio.”

Writing songs will be the next priority for Kerr after the band’s raft of live performances, and they’ve already shared new single ‘Release the Hounds’.

It’s attractively aggressive and is accompanied by a music video featuring Donald Trump masks, Glasgow, and the group acting as modern day Robin Hoods.

This time round they’re working in the studio with the Courteneers’ Joe Cross.

“It’s very different to what we do as a band, but Joe understands us,” Kerr explains.

“I feel like it’s progressed. It’s a rock band but we have all been heavily influenced by different things. It’s a very diverse sound.

“As we’ve got older, our influences have changed.”

The LaFontaines are looking to follow-up 2015’s debut album ‘Class’, and Kerr wants to take on both a different approach and a different topic.

“I just wanted to try to write this album in a month, I want to capture an overall emotion.

“Sometimes writing a record, it’s written over a long period of time, it ranges lots of different emotions, but with this album it’ll be the same sort of feeling.

“I don’t want Class two. I don’t want to talk about the class system.

“In saying that, we’re still living in it, and the world is in a crazier place than ever, so that’ll come through in some places.”

Fans shouldn’t have long to wait before they can see The LaFontaines in action.

“In February we go record for three or four weeks. After the album we’ll be playing as much as we can.”