At our early shows, you could see people like, 'I just wanna dance,' but they were looking around, not sure if it's cool," says Steve Bays, singer-keyboardist for Hot Hot Heat, from Victoria, British Columbia.

"But now people know that if they go to our shows, people are going to be dancing." Hot Hot Heat's jittery, caffeinated rhythms and disco grooves are helping persuade punk kids to bust a move -- image be damned. "With bands that come from punk rock, there's this pressure to maintain a certain level of cool," says Bays. "But the people I find cool know how to enjoy themselves."

Hot Hot Heat's debut, Make Up the Breakdown, was originally released on Seattle indie label Sub Pop; the band's new label, Warner Bros., will rerelease it in the spring. Breakdown is filled with spidery, Fugazi-like guitar lines, lucid melodies and Bays' spastic howl. "We like to get a bit freaky," he says. When Hot Hot Heat formed in 1999, they bashed out darker, harder punk anthems; it was only after firing their original singer that they acknowledged their inner pop stars. "I've been in a million bands -- mostly punk bands," Bays says. "But we listen to geeky shit, too, like Elton John and Billy Joel. There's no reason you can't have instinctually driven music that's also a lot of fun."

One other thing: Victoria may not be a musical hotbed, but it has birthed at least one other pop star. "I went to the same school as Nelly Furtado," Bays says. "She was in band, played trombone. She was a bit of a dork at the time."

CHRISTIAN HOARD
(February 20, 2003)

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