Haim: pop's top new sister act

The sisters brave rain, tiredness and a day's fasting on a visit to London, before a night partying with Florence and Mumford & Sons
Este, Danielle and Alana of Haim display one of the perks of ordering kids' meals whlie on tour Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian Linda Nylind/Guardian

If 2012 has provided one bankable trend in music, it's that consensus is over. A band that seemingly no one liked won the Mercury Prize, new artists such as Lana Del Rey and Spector have garnered the full spectrum of critique from "not bad" to "what knobs" and shows like The X Factor have been marred by indifference.

In the last few months, however, momentum has been building behind a band that seemingly everyone is into. Katy Perry and Azealia Banks say they're obsessed with them; Alex Turner turns up to their shows; they've signed two massive major label deals in the UK and US and have got music bloggers in a lather. What's perhaps more shocking in this death-of-guitar-music climate is this: they're a classic rock group.

The band are Haim, three sisters from the San Fernando valley who make music that sounds like it was written on a lakeside retreat attended by Stevie Nicks, John Waite and En Vogue. They are the full package: unfathomably good at their instruments and raucous live performers. They're also 100% hilarious. Ask them about the hype they're weathering and they'll make a joke about the magical powers of their periods and then tell you a story about the time they spent $500 on fireworks.

I meet them on a truly miserable autumn day. Rain lashes against the concrete of London's South Bank and the air smells of damp school uniform. The band have come straight from a 10-hour flight and look tested. Their Californian summer shoes have soaked through. "Next time," lead singer and middle sister Danielle says in a sardonic Daria drawl, "why don't you come to LA?"

Haim's story begins at an awkward dinner in 1970s California. Two singletons, Donna and Moti, had been invited to a wild party by a couple of mutual friends who, with all the subtlety of a Big Bang Theory scriptwriter, had bluffed them. It was a set-up. Donna, unimpressed, took her friend to the kitchen to tell her she didn't fancy Moti and she wanted to leave. If she had, Haim would surely never have been born.

When Donna came back into the sitting room, though, Moti was drumming on the table. "He was using his fingers as sticks, the plates as toms and the bottles as cymbals," says Este, eldest of the Haim sisters, now safely ensconced in a Wagamama, and recreating the moment her parents fell in love with chop sticks and soy sauce.

For Donna and Moti's children, music was in the blood from day one. With Mum on lead vocals and Dad on drums, the family formed their own covers band, Rockinhaim. The girls would spend their school holidays playing live at Californian county fairs.

'We'd learn songs off the radio, press pause and play for hours to learn all the chords and lyrics by ear. By the end we knew every chord progression out there'

Haim landscape
Haim. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

"It was the best school," says the youngest Haim, Alana, who started playing in the band when she was just five years old. "To learn songs, we'd have to record them off the radio to cassette tape and then press pause and play for hours to learn all the chords and lyrics by ear. By the end we knew every chord progression out there."

By the time the girls left school, their musical ability was prodigious. Danielle played in the touring bands of Cee-Lo Green and Julian Casablancas. Este finished a five-year music degree at UCLA in just two years.

Last year the original members of Rockinhaim regrouped and chucked Mum and Dad out the band. In March 2012, the girls released their first EP, full of emotionally windswept songs ripped from their west coast rock heritage: the layered, riff-based songwriting of 70s Fleetwood Mac with the slick vocal harmonies of Californian R&B. In the wake of the EP came those huge record deals, five-star reviews for their live show, and tour supports with Florence + the Machine and Mumford & Sons.

As they're recounting these successes, Haim start to yawn. They decide to head back to their hotel and almost immediately upon jumping into a taxi two thirds of them fall asleep on my shoulders. When we arrive, the band announce they're going for a quick shloof – the Yiddish for nap time.

We reconvene a couple of days later, just before they play London's Roundhouse, supporting their mate Ellie Goulding as part of the iTunes Festival. Unfortunately, the gig lands directly on Yom Kippur and the band have been fasting since the night before. (Este excluded – just one of what she describes as the perks of having diabetes; the others include getting a free queue-jumps at Disneyland "so now I go all the time").

If rain made them grouchy, what's 24 hours without food going to do? "Luckily we're on about an hour after sunset so we got to eat a bit," says Este. "But we had to leave synagogue early today to go to Topshop. These old ladies were giving us such glares."

'It's like we have a weird antenna, we know what each other are thinking on the stage'

Haim live
Haim live in Venice, California. Photograph: David Livingston/Getty

Este has garnered a reputation for her on-stage outbursts. In Brighton she told the crowd that her ex-boyfriend sent her a text message that said, 'I want a nap' but it came out saying, 'I want anal'. Her Twitter handle is @JizzieMcguire.

Danielle, by contrast, is introverted. Her stage presence is that of a woman wronged, all broody stares and furious head shakes. Alana says this means she is "the best of both worlds". "I've looked up to both of them my whole life, so I can see what they do wrong and what they do right. Now I never make mistakes."

Tonight Este is under strict instructions to keep it clean, but she can't help herself. "I think everyone's enjoying the show. Everyone clapped, so I guess they are, unless my tampon string is showing and you're just trying to alert me to it?"

"Esteeeeee," her sisters whine in unison. It's not long before she's at it again. "Hey there, cutie," she says to a boy in the crowd. "What's your name? Martin? Can you just text me after the show?" She gives him her phone number, over the mic, at a concert that's being streamed round the world.

"We work so hard at being a great live band," says Alana afterwards. "The reward is the reaction from the audience. It's like we have a weird antenna, we know what each other are thinking on the stage. Getting off stage, I feel high, if I'd ever done laughing gas before, being on stage is the best drug I could ever take in my life," she pauses. "Oh no that's so cheesy."

We head up to the balcony to catch Ellie Goulding's set - the highlight of which is Ellie removing her hooded top halfway through to reveal luscious cornrows. "Oh my god, it's Tupac!" Este screams. During Goulding's performance of Your Song (the John Lewis remix), Este reveals she learnt to french kiss by recreating the snog between Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge in slow motion with her hand.

In a cab after the show, Drake comes on the radio and the girls get into a fury. Apparently they had the idea to do a bar mitzvah video before him. "Maybe we could do a Passover video instead," suggests Alana. "Jessie Ware, Drake, Michael Cera all round the dinner table. Steven Spielberg will direct it. Barbara Streisand can be the cantor. Oh my god, are you getting all this?"

After a brief trip to Radio 1 – "We apologise if that caused anyone offence," says flustered stand-in DJ Phil Taggart when it's over – we head back to Camden, where the girls will end up drinking with the Vaccines and Mumford & Sons in a gross rockabilly pub. Their broad coalition of fans is growing all the time. With an album, in the process of being recorded with James Ford, due next year, it feels as if Haim could unite music's quarantined sects.

"Just don't write that we're on our periods all the time," shouts Este, as she disappears into the night.