Cage the Elephant won the Grammy for Best Rock Album with "Tell Me I'm Pretty," a hard-charging work driven by jarring guitars and grim subject matter.

It was the first Grammy for the band, which comes from Bowling Green, Kentucky, but has been based largely in Britain where it enjoys a wider following. 

"Tell Me I'm Pretty" won out in a field that included albums by alternative rock mainstays Weezer and chart-toppers Blink-182.

Vocalist Matt Shultz said that awards are "probably the furthest thing from your mind" when making an album.

"But it's an incredible confirmation that you're cutting through the noise and that people are having a similar experience to you," he told reporters.

"Tell Me I'm Pretty" is the fourth album by Cage the Elephant, which has subtly shifted its sound from a bluesy classic rock to a more searing guitar base.

For "Tell Me I'm Pretty," Cage the Elephant tapped as a producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, whose rough-around-the-edges garage rock sound can be heard throughout the album.

The band goes into dark territory on the track "Sweetie Little Jean" in which Shultz sings of a lingering trauma -- when he was 12, a girl in his neighborhood with whom he was friends was abducted and murdered.

The song "Punchin' Bag" revolves around a woman who tries to fight back in a physically abusive relationship.

The album's first single, "Mess Around," has touches of classic rock as Shultz appears to sing about an attractive woman who knows her power with men. 

But the song's meaning becomes more ambiguous through an accompanying video that incorporates silent-era films from French director Georges Melies, which were based on the travel novels of Jules Verne.

source: AFP