Favoured by indie musicians and avant-garde auteurs the glock is outgrowing its associations with primary school music rooms. Just don't call it a xylophone ...

What is it? Tiny hammers tiny strips of metal and a sound that can sooth or shatter your nerves. The glockenspiel not to be confused with a xylophone is the most well-known of the metallophone family of instruments. It is often used in pop songs to illustrate naivety or childlike wonderment so entwined with school music rooms is its history.

Who uses it? It's usually thrust upon primary schoolchildren in music lessons after a tentative introduction to the joys of the recorder and just before they're old enough to discover the preset demos on the class keyboard. It's actually a handy (and affordable) instrument for learning basic musical theory which can then be transferred to the more grown-up piano or any other instrument. It's probably this nostalgia for childhood music that has seen the glock become so popular in indie pop (they seem to be standard issue at twee festivals like Indietracks) of which the hard bright and unusually violent glock-abusing Los Campesinos! are the undisputed leaders. Elsewhere Bruce Springsteen has used an electric glockenspiel as part of the E Street Band's set-up since Born to Run and Radiohead Xiu Xiu the Beach Boys the Velvet Underground and more have all dabbled. Here's a Spotify playlist.

How does it work? Tuned metal keys are arranged in the same layout as a piano keyboard above a resonance chamber so striking the keys with a mallet produces a bright high-pitched ringing tone.

Where does it come from? The glockenspiel as we know it hails from Germany (meaning "bell play") although the metallophones evolved together over a period stretching back 300 years diverging into the gamelan instruments of Bali and Java in southeast Asia and the vibraphone celesta and glockenspiel in Europe and America.

Why is it classic? It's an excellent tool for writing melodies and a good instrument for learning a topline tune. Its sharp piercing tone slices through other instrumentation so its classic both for bashing out odd ear-catching riffs in pop songs and for layering trebly sequences into shimmering metallic patterns in minimalist or percussion-based composition.

What's the best ever glockenspiel song?Steve Reich's Drumming.

Five facts and things

* Why does "glockenspiel" mean "bell play" if there aren't any bells on a glockenspiel? The name was originally attached to a substantially different kind of percussion instrument which would require a number of players to strike a series of bells. Sometime in the 17th century the bells were replaced by steel bars resulting in a completely new instrument but retained the original name.

* That bell instrument sounds pretty cool what happened to it? It evolved into what is now known as the carillon the world's heaviest musical instrument!

* So what IS the difference between a glockenspiel and a xylophone? Xylophones have wooden keys and tend to be larger and lower in register.

* What's the definition of a metallophone? Any musical instrument consisting of tuned metal bars that are struck to make a sound. Relatives of the glock include fangxiang gangsa gend r jegogan jublag saron slentem ugal and steel marimbaphone.

* In January Gareth Campesinos! put his beloved glock up for auction to raise money for the Haiti relief fund. It has stickers on it reminding him: "GARETH DON'T BE AFRAID TO MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH HOT GIRLS" making it officially the twee-est glockenspiel of all time.