Boy Kill Boy Like Life And Lily Allen

Life is good in Boy Kill Boy.

"There are no down sides to being in a band," says keyboardist Pete Carr. "Some people bitch and whine about it, but a year-and-a-half ago, I was getting up at six o'clock every morning, putting a suit on and going into an office. So I can't complain about this life at all."

Those are sage words, delivered via a crackly London-to-Toronto phone connection. The U.K. quartet have already landed a hit in their native country with the jangly pop ditty, "Suzie," and now they're launching themselves head-first into the market with their first full-length album, Civilian.

Fortunately, the manic energy on Boy Kill Boy's debut has an authentic source.

"When we were writing the songs, it came quite soon after we'd also decided that, right, this is it — we're gonna change the name of the band, and we're gonna be a lot more direct, both in our messages and the sound of the music," explains Carr. "Before, we were more concerned with what we thought people wanted.

"This time, we used our own judgment as the filter and decided to just lock ourselves away and do it on our own without thinking about what anyone else would want."

But even for staunchly DIY indie musicians, the reality of the popular music biz is inescapable, and that includes mass amounts of interviews and appearances. After relating a humorous anecdote about band bemusement at having a day off, Carr acknowledges the double-edged sword of fame and the pressure that comes with it.

"That's the nature of the beast, isn't it? The goal for anyone in this business is to get out there, have people see your face and hear your music. And the flip side to that is that you've got to go on radio and TV, and you've got to do all this stuff that's part of... well, I hate to call it a job, because if you like music and you play music then it's not a job. But the flip side to all that is that you have to do the media bit.

"Yeah, it gets a bit hectic, but life gets hectic. And it's not really hectic if you're getting up every morning, being taken somewhere then being taken back, and all you have to worry about is doing interviews. That's not much of a worry, is it?"

Not if you're more reluctant to court controversy than some of your countrymen. Other than a jab at boy band Westlife, stemming from a shared TV show bill ("I could see them mocking us, playing air guitar and headbanging while we performed, so that got me a little bit"), Boy Kill Boy are hardly the same sort of trash-talkers as, say, Lily Allen.

"She thinks [ex-Libertines guitarist] Carl Barat's full of himself?" Carr says with a laugh. "This is the same Lily Allen that was wandering around backstage at T In The Park asking every band if they were #1. And when they said 'No,' she'd happily inform them that she was #1.

"But afterwards, she was pretty funny. In an industry where people like her are constantly getting smoke blown up their ass, for someone to come along and go, 'Fuck you, I'm going to do what I want to do, and if you don't like it, tough,' I think that's refreshing. I think she's quite endearing, really."