If Snow Patrol aren't returning your calls, don't fret -- the Irish balladeers are busy, busy, busy. The quintet are currently opening Coldplay's U.S. tour, will hit the road with U2 this fall, and have now announced a headlining jaunt in support of their last release, 2008's A Hundred Million Suns.

Snow Patrol singer Gary Lightbody is cool with his band being "like the Village People, only less gay."

Snow Patrol have responded to Manic Street Preachers bassist Nick Wire, who called the Irish band "utterly deplorable" and "unredeemingly, utterly shit."

Ouch!

Just hours before Irish rock band Snow Patrol played an intimate tour opener at New York City's 600-capacity Bowery Ballroom, frontman Gary Lightbody spoke with SPIN.com about "Crack the Shutters," the new single from his group's latest album, A Hundred Million Suns<

For nearly three years, since the release of his band's 2006 album, Eyes Open, Snow Patrol's wise-cracking frontman Gary Lightbody would drop into producer Garret "Jacknife" Lee's studio in Westmeath, Ireland, to tinker with ideas -- ideas that were eventually fleshed out on the band's just-release follow-up, A Hundred Millions Suns.

As we here at SPIN.com sit back and look at the past week, we can't help but wonder: Is the U.K. planning a musical takeover? Oasis and Snow Patrol both kicked off massive North American tours; Lily Allen premiered a brand new single and video; Coldplay was slapped with a new lawsuit; and Robbie Williams revealed his, uh, weird drug habits. It appears the invasion has already begun.