for King & Country is a Christian rock-duo made up of brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone from Australia.  Billboard Magazine named them as one of the "New Artists to Watch" for in 2012, and their songs have been featured in TV series including, "The Vampire Diaries" and "Drop Dead Diva."

Luke Smallbone sat down with BREATHEcast recently to talk about the band's first full-length album Crave and what it's like to be featured on "The Bible" miniseries soundtrack.

BREATHEcast:Tell me a little bit about your last album, Crave. I know it's your full-length studio album.

Luke Smallbone:  Crave was released Feb. 28, 2011. We just had our one-year anniversary. When people ask us where the stories and lyrics come from, the way we like to put it is as if you were to take a year out of someone's life...those are the things we write about. We write about our highs and lows, our relationship with the Lord. There are some love songs and breakup songs on there. We strive to be very honest and real with our lyrics, so that's why we took a year out of our lives to write about those things.

BREATHEcast:How would you say it compares to the self-titled EP?

Luke:  The EP was before all of the labels and those types of things. There's a different concentration that takes place when you do an album with a label and you have that support and a lot of people in the building that are great at what they do. They stretch and pull us. Hopefully the lyric content gets more honest and gets more real and people can see, "hey they're not just trying to write a song that's catchy."

BREATHEcast:  How do you think Crave will compare to future records with label support?

Luke:  We're already doing some writing for the next one. You always hope that things continue and that you can grow and change. Most of all Crave will always be the first. My wife and I just had our first child. The truth is you can never play favorites as a father but there will always be something about your first-born. I think it's the same thing with an album.

We always talk about the future being more bright and exciting so hopefully on the next we can trump the first one.

BREATHEcast:  They always say you have your whole life to write your first record.

Luke:  And then you have your "sophomore slump." That's what we're trying to avoid. We wrote over 100 songs for the first album so we're going to try and write quite a lot as well. I told some people the other day if I don't feel like I've put in my all for the second album I'm not going to sleep very well at night. That's the truth.

I think when you're given these opportunities in God and life, you have to give all you got to it. These things come and go. Right now we're given the opportunity and we want to do all that we can to take advantage of that.

BREATHEcast:  How excited were you guys to be part of "The Bible" miniseries soundtrack? Are you fans of the show?

Luke:  We got a little bit of time to hang out with Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma. It's kind of funny how it started. We were at a get together, there was some food and we were all talking. After he did a preview of the series he came up to me and said [now in full English accent] "I quite like that song 'Crave' and I think we're going to put a little bit of footage to it." Sure enough a couple weeks later we see some footage for it.

Honestly that song kind of came of an interesting day and time for me. I showed up to the studio and I don't know if it was because it was a cloudy, gloomy, depressing day, but I said to the guy I was writing with, "Man, one thing I've realized is that hope is what every single one of us craves and that's never going to change." I think when you look at those images of Jesus and everything going on, he is the hope of the world. So to have those images attached to the song was a real thrill for me.

BREATHEcast:  Well now that you know the producers, what do you think of the show?

Luke:  They're doing ten hours of footage, so basically like five movies that they're trying to put on TV. When I think about the amount of work for that, I'm sitting there going, "that's insane." I don't even know how they do that.

BREATHEcast:  How did you get involved with ministry through music?

Luke:  I kind of grew up around music. My dad was a concert promoter in Australia and lost an awful lot of money on tour. He was looking for a fresh start in America. He got a job offer and moved the entire family to Nashville, Tenn. At the same time my sister started doing music as well. We kind of grew up on the road and learned a lot about music that way.

In high school I was passionate about pursuing sports. I actually tore my ACL my junior year of high school. I knew that was God saying, "well if your leg's not going to work, then probably you need to do something else."

My brother and I always saw the power of music in people's lives. I think when you go to church and hear a preacher, you have to be very open and willing to hear that preacher. But songs have a way to get into your soul and mess with you a little bit, even if you're not looking for the lyric content. We saw the power of music and the power of the content attached to it.

BREATHEcast:  What are some of your musical influences? Any secular artists make it on the iPod?

Luke:  I grew up listening to all sorts of music but the one in high school is Switchfoot. Beautiful Letdown kind of changed my perception of music. I listened to that album and every song on there was meant to be on there. It was probably at that time that I became really interested in music. Before that, I just wasn't totally impressed with a lot of stuff out there. I was just disillusioned by some it. They gave an awful lot of effort and it showed. I fell in love with that album.

BREATHEcast:  What's next for King and Country? Tour, new album?

Luke:  Our lives have been fairly busy over the last year. We're so thankful of that tour with Jason Castro. This spring we're going to be doing a lot of one-offs. This summer we're pretty much paying every festival that's out there. Then this fall we'll go out on another one of our headline tours. We're not sure who's going to be out with us right, but that's all in the works. As soon as we have something we'll let you guys know the details.

It's going to be a fairly busy year mixed in with songwriting and doing all these other things. We're just very thankful to be able to do music and spread good views and hope.