MTV Award nods add fuel to Brit bands' US ambitions.(News)

The Darkness and Franz Ferdinand are gearing up for renewed assaults an the US after grabbing two nominations apiece at this year's MTV Video Music Awards.

Domino-signed Franz Ferdinand will be capitalising on nods in the event's breakthrough and MTV2 categories by setting off in September for a three-week Stateside tour as part of their fifth visit there during the past 12 months.

Around the same time, The Darkness's US record label Atlantic will be going to radio with a rerecorded version of Permission To Land cut Get Your Hands Off My Woman, the band's first work with one-time Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker.

Franz Ferdinand malinger Cernel Canning says MTV has played an important role in breaking the band in the US. "MTV were really early with us--about six weeks into the record being released--and they did a small feature which ran about 17 times in a week and the response we got was brilliant," he says.

Canning adds the band, whose self-titled album through Epic has already almost shipped 500,000 units Stateside, had been offered a performance slot at the awards in Florida on August 29. However, they, had to turn it down as it coincides with their Reading/Leeds festival date. Fellow nominees The Darkness also have commitments to the same festival that weekend.

Franz Ferdinand's ...