Paramore / Photo by Viki Forshee

Franklin, Tennessee -- 30 minutes south of Nashville – is one of the wealthiest towns in one of the nation's wealthiest counties. Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Miley Cyrus, and Sheryl Crow live around here. So does half of the contemporary Christian-music industry. It only follows, then, that the Starbucks on Main Street is a haven for power meetings, and right now, the brain trust behind local-kids-done-good Paramore face a minor crisis as they discuss new merch with their manager. Josh Farro, the pop-punk quartet's 20-year-old guitarist, wears a look of concern and resignation.

"I asked for it extra hot," he says, shrugging apologetically as he hands a soy-six-pump-extra-hot-no-water chai to 19-yearold flame-haired singer Hayley Williams. "But it's still hardly hot at all." Williams gamely accepts the tea. Crisis averted.

Paramore earned a gold record for their second album, Riot!, in November, and a Best New Artist Grammy nomination in December (although every third caffeine fiend in the place might have a gold record over his or her mantel at home). Williams and Farro are inspecting a white-and-orange-striped scarf that will be sold on an upcoming tour. It's a little wide, Williams figures, draping it around her diminutive frame, and it might look better if the orange was as bright on both sides. The text on the tag might be placed wrong, too.

"But I'm nitpicking," she says, smiling sweetly. "If it looks like we have some crazy designer thing and we're some little band, that wouldn't look right, would it?"

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She says this earnestly, but Paramore haven't really been a little band for some time. They were little, in a few senses, for a year or so after the release of their 2005 debut, All We Know Is Falling (on emo powerhouse Fueled by Ramen), while then-16-year-old Williams' dad was piloting the band's tour van and she and then-15-year-old drummer Zac Farro were scribbling homework before soundcheck. They've since sold 178,000 copies of Falling, and by the time the fiercely insistent chorus of sweet-revenge anthem "Misery Business" (from Riot!) hit TRL, bigness was looming. Six hundred and fifty thousand copies of Riot! later, the band rang in 2008 on MTV, shivering with VJ Damien Fahey as the Times Square ball dropped on Tila Tequila's New Year's Eve Masquerade.

Back at home in early January -- their nearly monthlong break around the holidays being the longest they've had in years -- things don't seem all that big or all that different. Josh packs Williams and her lukewarm tea into his 1995 Toyota Camry four-door sedan, and they roll past the 70-year-old Franklin Cinema and out of Franklin's 15-block, Old South-charming downtown into the sprawl of manicured upper-middle-class suburbs.

On these rare occasions when they're home, the members of Paramore congregate in the converted attic at friend Ajax's parents' place. They play video games, watch movies, and tussle with Ajax's boxer, Roxy. Ajax, a genial jeans-and-T-shirt guy in a black beanie, is as regular-kid as they come; without the magazine-ready haircuts and musical ability, his four friends would probably come off the same way.

"Hayley and I were talking last night," says Josh, perching on Ajax's couch, as Zac, 17, pulls up a chair. "We were in my car, and 'Misery Business' came on the radio. It doesn't feel like it's us. It's like, wow…." Williams nods slowly in agreement.