What if Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera decided to play a club the size of I-Spy? You'd go just out of curiosity, right? For the chance to see one of the nation's biggest entertainers in a club with only a few hundred capacity, and for an entrance fee of $15, most of us would forget our grievances against over-the-top marketing and pre-fab pop music and check it out, even if only to scoff. They might not be America's biggest stars, but Japan's PuffyAmiYumi are genuine pop icons in their homeland, and they're playing I-Spy on Friday, July 12.

Much like the Spice Girls in the U.K., Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura were respondents to a Japanese talent search in 1995. Ami hailed from Tokyo and Yumi from Osaka, but Sony put their demo tapes together and built a pop group around the like-sounding singers (they even appear as though they could be siblings). Add former Jellyfish drummer Andy Sturmer and Japanese composer/ producer Tamio Okuda of the band Unicorn, and a year later, the girls (called just Puffy everywhere save for the U.S.) were superstars.

Their first stateside release came in 2000 with Spike, and lovers of true pop took notice. This year the duo released An Illustrated History, an overview of PuffyAmiYumi's last three albums (all in all they've released seven) bursting with sparkling, harmony-laden songs that sound like ABBA, the Who, Electric Light Orchestra, and Katrina and the Waves on a steady diet of cream soda and bubblegum. Though a couple of the songs are sung in English, it's the tracks sung in Ami and Yumi's native tongue that are the most engaging. "Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi" ("That's the Way It Is") is a dead-on take on '60s power pop, while the Brazilian-influenced material from PRMX--a remix album featuring work from Yasuharu Konishi of Pizzicato Five, Malcolm McLaren, and Fantastic Plastic Machine--is pure dance-floor hype.

Of course, as per all pre-fab outfits, PuffyAmiYumi have been merchandised up to their eyeballs. They've got cartoon mascots created by New York artist Rodney Greenblat (Ami is Thunder Bunny while Yumi is known as Wonder Mew), and the girls' fashions and dance moves have inspired trends for years. Yes, it's twee at times, and always indulgent, but it's hard to dislike PuffyAmiYumi wholesale because, well, it's just such a diversion from anything American--or even anything modern. "Nichiyohbi no Musume" ("Sunday Girls") is full of pipes and horns and sounds like a cross between Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and the Ronettes, "Tomodachi" ("Friends") sounds so much like the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" that it's almost a blatant rip-off, and "Jet Keisatu" ("Jet Police") is built around the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again." Okay, so PuffyAmiYumi sound totally American, and at times British, just translated to Japanese.

Speaking of Japanese, when asked through a translator what it was like to go from unknowns to superstars, and whether it was a difficult transition or all fun and games, both singers demur in charmingly broken English. Yumi says, "I don't remember that we had trouble time and we don't think we are star, as well. It's been the same." Ami displays the same lack of pretense, adding, "We are the same human being as you are, it's nothing different. I been doing gardening before I became professional. Nothing really changed." It's apparent they're trying to say that fame has not gone to their heads. When asked what they imagine it will be like to tour in a country where they are far less known and not a part of the mainstream culture, the translation is completely off. Yumi and Ami both answer that they will miss their friends, and Yumi also will miss her cat.

Okay, so if their humility in the face of such success isn't reason enough to take in this Japanese sensation--along with the aforementioned novelty and the re-imagined pop-culture filtered through two Japanese girls and an American/ Japanese production duo--I don't know what to tell you. It'll be a spectacle, sure to satisfy the scoffers and bubblegum-lovers alike.