If you haven’t heard this band yet, check them out immediately. Although they’ve been around since 1999, their career just started picking up with the release of their latest album, which includes a few songs that have been getting major play from indie and mainstream radio stations alike.

The group of talented musicians, all three in their mid-twenties, have turned out three full-length albums, one of which being a two-disc compilation, and are continuing down a road of success with their latest release, “Absolution.”

The band really took on a life of its own more than ten years ago when the three - formerly known as the Rocket Baby Dolls - entered a battle of the bands competition, which they lost significantly. Singer Matthew Bellamy recounts the experience as a turning point for the band, helping them not only rename and reshape their appearance but also take a on a deeper appreciation for music, according to a group biography  at MicoCuts.net.

“I think that psychologically it changed many things in our heads,” Bellamy said. “Because we came to lose; we expected to lose. And we were angry somehow. We realized that emotion - the vibrations that you create - is as important as your technical skills. We had just discovered something: music is a matter of emotion.”

For several more years, the band that now called itself Muse continued to play cover songs and then came into their own and began tapping the creative passion of Bellamy. Their first album, “Showbiz,” was released in 1999, selling 700,000 copies and scoring the band a British nomination for Best New Act.

It wasn’t until 2002 that Muse began its first international tour which resulted in a DVD and CD called Hullabaloo, released in France, Japan, and Britain. In 2004, after putting out a second and third album, Muse was again nominated for Best British Rock Act.

The early sounds of Muse ? which have often been compared to Radiohead ?began to change and morph in 2001, as the band, working to shape its second album, went through a phase of change that they correlate to changes that were happening at a global level.

Muse’s Bellamy said in previous interviews that the third album took on a harder edge due to the influence of the UK joining the Iraq war and the influence it had on the band.

“It’s not that we?re a political band, but I think it?s impossible to avoid these things,” Bellamy said. “I think there’s a lot of apocalyptic stuff going on in a lot of the songs. While we were recording all the war [with Iraq] was coming out and we were in the process of recording while watching that. The direction definitely took a pretty harsh change in the middle of it all.”

During their recent Madison Square Garden performance, those influences on the band’s attitude couldn’t have been conveyed more clearly. The show had a definite freedom theme, from the band playing songs such as “Soldier’s Poem,” “Invincible” and “Knights of Cydonia,”  to them rocking out in front of a backdrop showing  projections of actual war protest rallies and riots.

For more information about this British band, check out the official Web site of Muse.