Like the scorching beats of Donna Summer or Slave, NYC/Sacramento, CA funk-punkers !!! are hotter than a summer in Hell's Kitchen. A ramshackle battalion of unassuming, almost dorky guys who don't take themselves too seriously, the band makes hot, tight party music for a post-punk generation.

Most often pronounced, "chik chik chik"--as in the rhythm of the high hat--!!! takes the best beats and bass lines of disco, soul, and funk, slaps them with some scratchy, art-punky guitar, wraps them in a foil of thick, steamy, preacherlike vocals (by a guy named Nic Offer), and adds on an R&B-flavored mini-horn section. Like their idols and predecessors (Chic, James Brown, ESG, Bohannon, the Clash), they preach the Gospel of Shaking Your Ass 24:7.

As their self-titled full-length on Gold Standard Laboratories shows, !!! filter their back-alley disco party through the past 20 years of punk, post-punk, agitcore, goth, electro, and experimental music. Add a helping of post-modern darkness, and !!!'s freak is way chic.

But how do seven guys and three exclamation points turn unassuming clubs into foggy, perspiring pits just by flipping on some amp switches? It all started in Sacramento, CA, back in 1996, when the gaggle of scrappy punkers (including future members of Yah-Mos and Outhud) decided to mix deep rhythms, choppy guitars, and staccato, husky singing. They started playing gigs, and according to onstage rants by Offer, got a lot of shit for playing dance music (it being the same year nearly everyone else was totally digging on Smashing Pumpkins). Fast- forward six years: The pulse of !!! reverberates in an underground that includes like-minded bands such as the Rapture, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Radio 4, with Offer baiting his crowds to work out the dance moves the band works so hard to create. Their complex rhythms are so loud and so catchy, !!! caught the eye of Touch & Go, and the label should release their next record in early 2003. People, start perspiring just at the thought of it.