How Tokio Hotel conquered the 'tweens of Europe.

An American looking at the nominees for best band in the upcoming MTV European Music Awards might take pause: Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte, Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and … Tokio Hotel? The same oddly spelled combo shows up in the best inter act category, i.e., the "Band That Has Been the Most Interactive With Fans and Online," alongside Fall Out Boy, Depeche Mode, 30 Seconds to Mars, and My Chemical Romance. Fairly big hitters all, so who's Tokio Hotel, and what's it doing there?

In short: Tokio Hotel is a relatively new rock quartet with a massive teen and preteen following in Europe. Like many such phenomenons, it's easy to miss if you're either male or well on the other side of puberty. But what's most fascinating about the band isn't the size and dedication of its fan base. It's that Tokio Hotel hails not from one of Europe's pop and rock strongholds, such as England or Sweden, but from Germany—and that it sings in its native language.

Devilish, as Tokio Hotel first went by, was formed in 2001 by four boys barely in their teens: twins Bill (vocals) and Tom (guitar) Kaulitz as the undisputed sexy leaders, and bassist Georg Listing and drummer Gustav Schäfer as the stoic rhythm section. Bill participated in a German version of Star Search in 2003, but the fortunes of the band really turned in 2004, after it was picked up by a group of songwriters and producers from Hamburg. They fine-tuned the band's music and image: emo-ish rock played by style-obsessed teens. The latter aspect would become the band's calling card—the Kaulitzes embody the most visually outrageous moments of early-'80s new wave, making their guyliner-sporting rivals in MTV's best band category look like junior brokers at Morgan Stanley. Tom favors oversize clothing and long dreads reminiscent of Boy George, while Bill is an impossibly androgynous creature in pancake makeup and teased-out, frosted hair.

After a quick name change ("Tokio" being the German spelling for the Japanese city and "Hotel" a reference to constant touring), Bill and Tom's excellent adventure began in earnest in 2005. Within two years, Tokio Hotel fever spread from Germany to neighboring countries via catchy, goth-tinged pop-punk singles such as "Durch den Monsun," "Rette Mich," and "Übers Ende der Welt," as well as the Schrei and Zimmer 483 albums. Girls in Scandinavia, Italy, England, and even Israel—shocker!—started singing along phonetically. France is the country where the band is the most popular, after Germany, with albums and DVDs squatting the upper reaches of the charts and the fall 2007 tour selling out in minutes. An online video captured throngs of French girls waiting for the band outside its hotel. Most of them are in black, many are in leather jackets. When a musician finally emerges, the scene suddenly turns into an outtake from Hitchcock's The Birds as he gets engulfed in a feverish, shrieking swarm. (Passions seem to run milder in America. Even Miley Cyrus doesn't seem to elicit such intense love, and when someone made a tearful video defending Britney Spears after the starlet's latest televised debacle, most viewers assumed it was a performance art-type ironic gesture.)