Singer/pianist Ben Folds has had significant success as a solo artist in the past decade, but he remains best known as the leader of the ironically named power-pop trio the Ben Folds Five. After cutting his teeth as the bass player in the Duke University indie-rock band Majosha during the late '80s, Folds did extensive Nashville session work as a drummer and studied music at the University of Miami before focusing seriously on piano as a tunesmith.

Time spent working in musical theater while honing his songs in New York eventually led to label interest. In 1994 after returning to North Carolina, Folds teamed with bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee to form the Ben Folds Five. With songs powered by Folds' gift for writing hooks as well as intelligent lyrics filled with sarcasm and melancholy, the group build a loyal following and managed several alt-rock radio hits including "Brick," "Song for the Dumped" and "Army."

After the band parted amiably in 2000, Folds has embarked on a sucessful solo career that has taken numerous left turns including a collaboration with actor William Shatner (on his tongue-in-cheek album Has Been), contributions to the animated Dreamworks hit Over the Hedge, live concerts with symphonies and his 2009 experiment, Ben Folds Presents University A Cappella. Working with college vocal group's from around the nation, Folds recast many of his most popular songs in elaborate new arrangements just for human voices.

Folds first reunited with Sledge and Jessee for a one-off concert at UNC Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill in 2008 (playing its last album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner in its entirety as part of a MySpace concert series), but the group came together again in 2011 to record three new tunes for the three-disc, career-spanning Folds compilation The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective. Last year, the trio announced it was recording a new album and played several high-profile summer festivals including Mountain Jam and Bonnaroo. The band brings its current headlining tour to promote that new effort The Sound of the Life of the Mind when the trio headlines the Warfield Thursday night. Nataly Dawn opens the show.

Ben Folds Five
Thursday, Jan. 31, 8 p.m. $35-$45
Warfield Theatre