Franz Ferdinand

You can talk “post-punk revival” till you turn blue in the face, but there’s nothing retro about the razor-wire riffs and blood-pumping beats of Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand. Sure, the stomp-’til-you’re-sore slam and six-string slash of “Take Me Out” shows love for the band’s skinny-tied, skewed-Scot forebears, Josef K. But by the time you get around to the tight-wound pop hooks and herky-jerky hip-shake of “Do You Want To,” and the acid-tongued lyrical attack of riot-rouser “The Fallen” — “what’s wrong with a little destruction,” indeed — it’s obvious that the hottest band to blast out of the U.K. in the ’00s is all about the here and now.

On your mark, get set, groove, as you explore the dance floor with Franz Ferdinand in Next Steps.

Besides bringing post-punk’s scrappy punch to the big time, Franz Ferdinand reminded the world that you can dance and rock at the same time, throwing some funk in with the punk. So it’s no surprise to find they can rip it up while covering the original CBGB-meets-Studio 54 collision, Blondie’s Eurodisco dream “Call Me.” And their own disco-ball-bouncer “No You Girls” pumps up its funk factor even further with Depeche Mode/Yaz/Erasure electro-pop sultan Vince Clarke’s rave-ready remix. But lest you forget the fire-spitting rock demons dwelling inside those Scottish souls, “Bite Hard” chomps down with fang-baring ferocity on the clang, crash, and crunch of Franz Ferdinand’s furious, fist-shaking side.

Just when the world was hungering for a new way to rock, Franz Ferdinand came storming out of Scotland, showering those sonically starved masses with spiky-but-sweet shards of post-punk power and showing off some sugar-footed dance moves besides. And the stylish Scots somehow did it all without letting a single stitch of their super-sharp look go astray. So how did a bunch of Glaswegians named after a 19th-century Austrian archduke take their spitfire sound to the chart-topping platinum palace? We’ve assembled an answer to that very question for you, pulling together Franz Ferdinand’s globe-shaking smashes alongside remixes, covers, live cuts, and rarities, but all you really need to remember is this: when they ask “Do You Want To,” just shout out a loud, unabashed “Yes!”