Keane perform for MSN

You know that traditional rhyme about what a bride should wear at her wedding for good luck? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue?

Well, we thought it would be a good idea to invite some of our favourite artists to perform a four-track live session based on it.

"How does that work?", we hear you cry.

It's really very simple. We need one old song from their back catalogue, one new one, one cover ('borrowed'), and one 'blue' (which can mean anything we want it to mean - might be a sad song, might have the word 'blue' in the title, whatever).

Anyway, thankfully for us, the mighty Keane agreed! Check out the tracks they performed by clicking in the video player above and keep reading to find out more about their choices.

What was the thinking behind the Springsteen cover (The River)?
Tom: Good question. There's never any thinking behind anything we do!
Richard: We used to do it as a little segue in the live set. One of the people from our American label was desperate to hear it, he'd been begging us to do it, so we did it a while back in the States. And then we thought, "We haven't done it in Europe or the UK or whatever", so we thought it would be a good one to record for posterity.

Have you met Bruce?
Tom (sheepishly): Yes. I bored the pants off him. It was at... this is going to sound very glamorous... a post-Grammys party. It was a silly party. I mean, Bruce Springsteen was probably one of the less famous people there... it was one of those kind of weird events (laughs).

And why the cover of The Downtown Lights?
Tom: Well, The Blue Nile are probably in my top five bands of all time. I absolutely love their music and I know you guys wanted something blue, so we wracked our brains... I just typed 'blue' into my iTunes and The Blue Nile came up... so I thought, "What a great chance to do one of their songs".

Most people have never heard of them, so it's nice to do something of theirs.

Tells us about Disconnected.
Tom: We did a great video for it. We did the video with a guy called Jay Bayona who is a Spanish film director. He made this great kind of short horror film for it.

He directed a horror film called The Orphanage. Had you seen that before?
Richard: Yeah. We were big fans of The Orphanage. I think it came out in 2007 and won lots of awards. So yeah, Jay and Sergio Sanchez, who wrote the script, came to see us play. We've met them quite a few times. And it was one of those opportunities which happen quite a lot when people say, "Oh, we'd love to work with you", but with those guys we were genuinely desperate to do something with them. So we sent them a few songs from the new record and they came back saying, "We want to do this video for Disconnected". It was their idea. It has this spooky, slightly comic side to the song that we were really pleased they picked up on.

They did this sort of pastiche of an '80s or '90s Italian horror film and gave it a name nobody remembers... we've got these proper film posters for it and everything... so yeah, it's the best video we've ever made by miles.

Do you enjoy touring?
Richard: It's a difficult question because going out and playing the songs to people is one of the most enjoyable things you can do because you can see the connection you have with people...

Would it be churlish to complain too much?
Tom (nodding head knowingly): Yes.

Richard: I think it's probably hardest on Tom because he's got to stand up there and produce lots of energy, even if it's 4am in our heads... That's a hard thing, I think, to do. You know, and remember what country you're in and what the words are...

Tom: There's more emphasis on touring these days because bands aren't selling as many records anymore. No-one is. So you have to go out there and play live... but you know, it's all part of the job, it's fine.