In no time at all, Craig Nicholls has become the most talked-about rock star since Liam Gallagher. And his band the Vines are showing British groups how it's done. Nigel Williamson meets the boys from Down Under.

Two stories recently ran on the front page of the arts section of the Los Angeles Times on consecutive days. One asks why British rock bands can't sell records in the US any more. The second carries the headline: "Vines catch rock's new wave."

Both appear at a time when there are just two British acts listed in the top 100 of the Billboard album chart. As if to reinforce the bankruptcy of contemporary British rock music, the third highest-placed album representing what we so recently and risibly called "cool Britannia" is by the Beatles. While Simon Frith, chair of the Mercury music prize judging panel, last week congratulated the UK music industry on giving us "the next generation of guitar bands" who have helped to create "the most joyful Mercury shortlist for years", the sad truth is that the most lucrative market in the world remains utterly indifferent to the charms of Electric Soft Parade, the Coral and Doves.

By contrast, the Vines - ineligible for the Mercury because they hail from Australia - are riding high. The band from down under have risen effortlessly to the top: their debut album, Highly Evolved, entered the American charts at number 11. So the only non-American band right now capable of rivalling the energy and adventure of the Strokes, White Stripes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club comes not from London, Manchester or Liverpool, but from Sydney.

Over dinner on the patio of a Sunset Boulevard restaurant on the night the Vines made the front page, affable bassist Patrick Matthews and manager Andy Kelly talk about the group's astonishing rise to fame. For it is not only America that has fallen for the Vines. On the album's release in Britain in July, it entered the charts at number three and was greeted with a frenzy of critical enthusiasm that exceeded even that afforded the Strokes' debut last year.

The Guardian review carried the headline: "Believe the hype." Yet even Kelly concedes the reaction to his youthful charges has been a little over the top. "NME said it was the best debut album of all time, which is plain ridiculous. And then, on the next page, there was a piece called, 'Anatomy of a rock god.' What's that all about?" In fact, it was a profile of Craig Nicholls, the Vines' highly strung 24-year-old lead singer. He doesn't join us for dinner, because he famously only eats McDonald's. Yet his presence looms over the evening. All the talk is of how earlier in the day while rehearsing for the band's next video, Outtathaway, Nicholls smashed his guitar and kicked over Hamish Rosser's drum-kit. Then he trashed the dressing room because a security guard had knocked on the door, demanding to know if he was smoking pot.

"Craig's not like other people. He has created this self-contained world in which the only thing that matters is his music. He doesn't give a fuck about anything else," Matthews warns. "But don't worry. You'll really like him. He's a great guy underneath. And he's the only reason any of us are here. It's his vision."

In no time, Nicholls has become the most talked-about rock star since Liam Gallagher. Possibly since Kurt Cobain. And most of the talk centres around his alleged mental instability and self-destructive tendencies. "See them soon," said the NME. "It could be the only chance you get." The implication was obvious. It's better to burn out than to fade away, and Nicholls is already being lined-up as rock's next screwed-up poster-boy martyr, destined to come to a Cobain-style end, and feed our need for a new sacrificial victim.

When we finally meet up with Nicholls on the video shoot, such speculation seems wide of the mark. An online message-board devoted to the band is full of wild and unsubstantiated stories about everything from heroin addiction to self-mutilation. Yet the singer appears blissfully unaware that he has become the object of such lurid gossip. He doesn't read his own press-cuttings and he apparently doesn't know how to use the internet. He lives in a sealed-off world, protected by the cosseting of his colleagues and his refusal to engage with anything other than his music.

The scene on the set is surreal. Inside a studio large enough to house a couple of jumbo jets, a reconstruction of a tiny, sweaty club has been built. On its stage are the Vines, performing to an audience of paid extras doing their best to look like a genuine rock'n'roll crowd. In effect, $200,000 is being spent on making a video that tries to recreate the atmosphere of a live gig. Quite why they couldn't film the real thing at a fraction of the cost is unclear. But such are the ways of major US labels. The Vines have been declared a "priority act", which means no expense spared. There is even a wardrobe department, despite the fact that the band wear their own street clothes and flatly refuse to allow the highly paid stylist to have them laundered.

Nicholls spins around like a hyper- active voodoo doll, guitar jerking, eyes rolling. His voice rasps, his legs kick uncontrollably and there is a palpable sense of danger about his stage presence. Even in this sterile environment and on the sixth run-through in front of a fake crowd, he is so magnetic that you hardly notice the rest of the band.

Afterwards, in his dressing room - the same one he trashed yesterday - Nicholls is in unusually reasonable mood. The bong pipe, which accompanies him everywhere, stands untouched on the table. "I suppose the guy was only doing his job," he concedes, when asked about the previous day's tantrum. He looks out of it and his eyes are focused on some invisible spot on the opposite wall. But once he starts talking about music, he becomes lucid and animated. "It's happened so swiftly we haven't really had a chance to stop and think. But I believe it's all a positive experience. It's good fun but we're really serious about our music."

He talks in staccato bursts, answers seldom relating to the questions. "Music is the most interesting thing I've found on this planet so far. There's no limit to it. But you have to be in your own head-space to do it. I don't think about too much of anything outside being in the band and recording songs." He gets up to restart the new Suede album, which is playing on his portable stereo. He has no interest in small talk or even in going over the details of the Vines' brief history. And he has given up talking to the US press because they always ask the same questions, the answers to which are all available in the record company handout: how he and Matthews met at high school in Sydney when they were 15 and decided they would rather play music than sit in class. How they worked in McDonald's. How Nicholls went to a graphic design college but dropped out after a year while Matthews did three years at medical school. "All that stuff's boring," he says.

But ask about his musical influences and he is off again. "Nirvana was the first. That really excited us. Then we got into Pavement. The Kinks. The Beatles. Blur. Supergrass..." His list goes on. "There were really good bands around at the time we were discovering music. We never thought we would be in a group. But then we started playing guitars and jamming and we made tapes and these songs came out. We did a lot of home recordings. It was underground and really exciting. The songs on the album were written over three years. We wanted to make an album that was very broad."

Matthews had said that from the moment Nicholls left school he had done nothing but sit in his room and listen to music. For seven years. "Yeah, you could say that," he says. "I thought it was a great thing. It was like spiritual and healing and freaking out, all at the same time." When he emerged from his room, he began circulating demos of his songs. Soon a bidding war for the Vines was in full swing. It ended with them flying to LA and signing a six-album deal with Capitol, although in Britain they are on Heavenly Recordings. They have been living in Los Angeles since July last year, and earlier this year spent four months recording Highly Evolved at Sunset Sound at a cost of $800 a day. That was when they lost their original drummer, Dave Oliffe, who cracked under the pressure and went home.

Yet Nicholls was the one everyone had marked out as the one rushing towards a possibly fatal burn-out. "I'm confused by that," he says, "because I'm really happy making music. Some people may think I'm a little weird but I have good intentions." He rejects the notion that he is headed the same tragic way as Cobain. "I don't want to disappoint anybody by not committing suicide in a few years. But I think it was really sad what happened to Kurt. That's not my plan at all."

I show him the "Anatomy of a rock god" article, which includes such telling insights as "he has the most exciting hair of 2002". He looks bemused. "I don't get it. Is that me?" He clearly hasn't seen the piece and hands it to Matthews. "Rock gods party and hang out with supermodels and drink. I'm just obsessed with music and bands and analysing guitar tracks and drum sounds. All I want to do is be really productive as an artist and put out as much interesting stuff as I can while I'm still young. I really care about music. Not about partying and hanging out."

He finds it hard to analyse the success of the Vines in the US, where so many British acts have failed. "It's baffling when you think of all the great British bands. We've got British and American influences in our music so maybe that helped. Or maybe it's sheer luck. Or good timing. I really don't know." In an attempt to get him to talk about something other than music, I try a few tricks. Five words to describe himself? "Lazy. Hyperactive. Happy. Sad. Clear-headed. Confused. I know that isn't five but they come in pairs." His perfect day? "In a studio somewhere. I think it's sacred being in a band. But you have to turn off sometimes." At last, a hint of a suggestion that he has a life outside music. We move in. So how does he turn off? "I listen to more music," he answers sweetly.

Highly Evolved is out now on Heavenly. The single Outtathaway is released on Monday. A British tour starts next month. EMI paid some of the author's travel expenses.