Billboard posted this very insightful look at Foster The People and their career so far. While many bands tour relentlessly to spread the word, Foster may have done things a little backwards thanks to some fortunate luck. The piece speaks mostly to managers and other industry insiders, but the story is still quite interesting. Some choice bits are below.

March 2010. Brent Kredel, an artist manager at Los Angeles' Monotone, receives a panicked phone call from a local musician who he'd befriended a year earlier.

 The call was from Mark Foster, leader of then-unknown L.A.-based rock band Foster the People. A few months earlier, the musician had posted his catchy song "Pumped Up Kicks" as a free download on his website. Foster, who had been writing music for commercials to pay the bills, wasn't quite prepared for the online explosion that followed.

"Mark was saying, 'I think I just did something good,'" recalls Kredel, who now co-manages Foster the People with Monotone's Brett Williams. "'Everyone is calling me and emailing me-what do I do? Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys?'"

Neither Foster nor Kredel had any clue that during the next 20 months, the trio-Foster, bassist Cubbie Fink and drummer Mark Pontius, who started playing together in late 2009-would have a top 10 album on the Billboard 200, a monstrous hit at top 40 radio, numerous TV appearances and synch deals, dozens of sold-out headlining concerts, a best new artist nomination at this year's MTV Video Music Awards and coveted performance slots at Coachella, Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

THE LIVE SHOW

In truth, the band didn't have much experience performing together. So booking agent Tom Windish stepped in and booked a handful of club shows in secondary and tertiary markets beginning in October 2010. "This was to help them get their sea legs," Windish says, "and become accustomed to playing in all sorts of different situations."

He admits that securing dates for a band without any touring experience was challenging. "I was begging promoters to book a band they'd never heard of, and to pay them $100 or $200," says Windish, who now books the group's tours in North and South America, Asia and Australia. "Some wouldn't go for it. Others did."

Foster the People had a secret weapon leading up to its tour that began taking shape in January: a massive database of fans who had downloaded "Pumped Up Kicks" from its website. "We sent an email to [those] 15,000 or 20,000 people that said, 'Hey, we're playing shows. Here's the first round,'" Kredel says.

The article continues to cover how the band's licensing success - getting songs on TV shows and commercials - and the radio success of "Pumped Up Kicks."

Foster The People will perform on Saturday Night Live this week, and you can catch them at 97X Next Big Thing December 3rd.