You guys seem to have been on a fast track to success, with magazines and music critics labeling you as one of the next big things. How has it been to have success months after putting out your first album?
We're super fortunate and grateful for all of the attention we've gotten. It's a thrill for people to respond to your music. It's really just a dream come true. It's just satisfying to make something and get feedback on it.
Your band was prominently featured in an episode of Gossip Girl with five songs being incorporated in the show. How did you get involved with CW's hottest show?
The music programmer from Gossip Girl came to an early show of ours and e-mailed us on our MySpace and asked if they could use some of our songs on the show. And of course we were really flattered and we said, "Yes, absolutely." I hadn't watched the show before that but I definitely watched the show we were in. It definitely exposed more people to us and that was a really cool thing too.
Would you say the show represents an accurate depiction of your own upbringing in Manhattan?
Yes and no. It's on TV so it's definitely going to be less. It's for TV and for young adults so its censored. It's definitely the PG version. I never went to school uptown, I always went downtown and when I did go to school, it was public. I don't really have the high school experience, but I just saw the one we were in so it seemed like a teenage show about teenagers and it seemed legit. And the girls... I liked a lot.
How would you classify your sound?
We have our influences from everything from the last 50 Cent single, which was f-ing amazing, to any country or blues rock that we're interested in. Something that happens a lot now is people draw on the music they grew up listening to and loving and trying to reshape it into something that expresses how they feel and their own lives or experiences.
And what about the '80s influence?
I feel like the '80s were getting their fair share of appropriation because most of the kids making music grew up in the '80s. So that's going to have a place in our work, whether it's a referential place or we're being irreverent about it. There's so many ways to look at it, especially something that had an influence on you, you're going to have a love-hate relationship with it. And we put '80s pop on a pedestal because it was kind of the last time, in my opinion, that mainstream pop music was good music and not just manufactured. But then there are times when you're like, "I f--ing hate the '80s and the production sounds."
The Virgins open for Black Kids at 9 p.m. tonight at Cat's Cradle, 300 E. Main St. in Carrboro. Tickets are $17.
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