Breaking: Semi Precious Weapons

Who: Brooklyn's Semi Precious Weapons, a quartet of foul-mouthed, heavy-riffing glam rockers led by rambunctious frontman Justin Tranter.

Sounds Like: Tranter is like Adam Ant, T.Rex's Marc Bolan and Ziggy Stardust wrapped into one, singing lead on AC/DC's Back In Black. On the band's debut album We Love You, which features "Magnetic Baby" and "Her Hair Is On Fire," Tranter's life's-a-party lyrics and cocky swagger takes center stage over riffs ripped from the Knack's "My Sharona." "There's 10 songs on our record and nine of them are about how fantastic I am," Tranter says. "In different settings, different time periods, different hats, things like that."

Vital Stats:

• Before signing with Razor & Tie, the band self-funded the release of We Love You with the money earned from Tranter's jewelry line, Fetty. Tranter has sold over 100,000 items of jewelry in stores like Barney's and Urban Outfitters. "As a band, we're still broke," Tranter reports, "but as a jewelry designer, no."

• Tranter isn't shy about his ego or causing a little controversy. "The album is called We Love You, but I originally wanted to call it Abort Rock & Roll," Tranter says. "I was strongly advised against that." As for songs like "Semi Precious Weapons" with lyrics like "I can't pay my rent but I'm fucking gorgeous," "That song is just about how fantastic I am," Tranter gloats. "Once you say that out loud, you have no choice but to keep making up brilliant shit."

• If you haven't already seen the band's bombastic videos, you may recognize Tranter from an episode of MTV's Made where he helped a geek turn into a rock god. Tranter has the makings of a good Made coach: The band studied at Boston's Berklee School of Music, where he excelled with a 3.9 GPA. Despite the classical training, "We were like 'screw it, someone needs to have fucking fun. Let’s have fun.' And so we started a party band, and it worked."

Hear It Now: We Love You is out now. In the meantime, check out our exclusive Breaking videos, featuring the band's intense performance of their hits "Semi Precious Weapons" and "Magnetic Baby" live from New York's Cutting Room.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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