Artist to Watch: Black Moth Super Rainbow

"I've never paid much attention to the music scene here," says Black Moth Super Rainbow's frontman Tobacco about nightlife in his hometown of Pittsburgh. "It's the opposite of a scene. People don't want other bands to get out of the city. They just want them to stay stuck, unhappy, in Pittsburgh." So when it came time for the psych-electronica group to record their latest disc, Dandelion Gum, the five pseudonymed members (Tobacco, bassist Power Pill Fist, keyboardist Seven Fields of Aphelion, drummer Iffernaut and keyboardist Father Hummingbird) made sure to beat a path out of the metropolis, heading north to a cabin in the Pennsylvania woods. They emerged with a concept album based on a local myth about two candy-wielding witches who lure kids to an uncertain doom. "It's probably just a tale invented by Father Hummingbird's grandparents," says Tobacco, 27. "I don't know if they created it to scare him, but we would talk about it when we were out there at night."

Originally conceived as a one-man project, Tobacco started Black Moth while still in high school in 1996, recording tunes on a vintage four-track. (He decided on the band name one morning while "trying to come up with a really awesome cereal name," he says.) He invited his cousin Power Pill and his best friend Father Hummingbird to join a year later. (The present day lineup came together in 2003.) But it wasn't until recently that the group has nabbed some of the indie-rock spotlight, thanks to a 2006 collabo with Austin, Texas' Octopus Project and plus a breakout performance at this year's South By Southwest Music Festival.

SOUND Armed with an arsenal of vintage keyboards (monosynths, polysynths, mellotrons, Fender Rhodeses and more), Black Moth crafts mind-blowing, interstellar psychedelic pop. Think Air, but peppier, Bright Black Morning Light but freakier. Getting tagged with the oft-overused "P" word makes Tobacco a bit nervous. "Psychedelic is such a bad term," he says. "Because it usually means some terrible band trying to be from the Sixties." To give their tunes a modern sensibility, Tobacco heavily doctors his vocals with a vocoder, rendering some of his lyrics totally unintelligible. Still, chewy song titles like "Jump Into My Mouth And Breathe The Stardust" and "Spinning Cotton Candy In A Shack Made Of Shingles" more than compensate for Tobacco's lyrical opacity.

ANONYMOUS SOURCE: "I want to keep the real-life people separate from what the band is," says Tobacco (ne Tom Fec) about his choice to adopt a pseudonym. "If I disappeared or stopped making music, or something ridiculous happened in my personal life, that would never affect what the band has created." There's another important reason for the anonymity: Some of the band members want to keep Black Moth secret from their full-time employers. (Tobacco toils at a software firm while Power Pill labors at a tombstone manufacturer). But the truth is slowly coming out. "We've been leaving to go on tour so much that they've started to pick up [on it]," Tobacco says. "And our band name is so bizarre to them." Meaning: digging for dirt is even easier these days with Google.

MUST-HAVE TRACK: "Forever Heavy"
"Forever Heavy" This wonky cut from their new disc may start off like an innocent little flower-pop number, but halfway through, an unforgettable synth hook roars through like a jet breaking the sound barrier.

WHERE TO HEAR IT: Dandelion Gum is out May 15th. Stream live and studio tracks for free here. The band's albums, EPs and singles are available for purchase here.

SEE THEM NOW: Watch Black Moth head back into the woods in this awesomely spooky, avant-garde clip that calls to mind The Blair Witch Project.

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