Phoenix Say 'No' to Side Projects

The Strokes did it. Even members of Radiohead and Pearl Jam have done it. But when it comes to individual band members taking time off from their main outfits to make solo albums, don't expect anyone from French indie band Phoenix to do it.

"It's not that I don't think we're that kind of band," singer Thomas Mars tells Spinner. "I know we're not that kind of band. We're always fighting to be the person in the back," he says of he and his bandmates. "We always don't want to get attention when we do something. Also, what we love about our band is that individually we are not worth anything but for some reason when we are together, there's something that happens that is interesting. I think we all know that individually it doesn't work."

One thing that Mars is less certain about is the arrival of a follow-up to the band's breakthrough fifth album, 2009's 'Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.' "It doesn't really matter," he says of the timing. "I don't think we put pressure on ourselves in that way. If we feel a record is good enough, we think it should come out as soon as possible. But if it's not good enough, then we always wait. For 'Alphabetical,' we waited four years, which is a long time. It's not too exciting for the record company but we'd rather do it that way than rush and not be happy with it."

Phoenix fans -- and their record company -- shouldn't worry about a lack of activity from the band. Mars says they have lots of projects besides the next album in the works. "I can't talk about them. We have a lot of different things ..." Movies? Marathon running? "No, it's always in the field of music. What's good is we can do a lot of different things and never get bored. It's always been that way."