The Girls

Wed May 7, Chop Suey, 9 pm, $5.

It's got all the makings of a Three's Company-style farce: Five guys from Seattle form a nü-wave/punk band, dub themselves the Girls, then hit the road to rock dive-bar patrons from coast to coast. Watch the hilarious misunderstandings unfold!

"The other night in L.A. this guy comes up to us and goes, 'Wait a minute, you guys are not the Girls,'" says singer Shannon Brown, checking in from the Arizona desert. "We were like, 'Sure enough, buddy, we are,' and he was all, 'Damn, I came all the way out here to see an all-girl rock band!' And I'm thinkin', why don't you just go to a strip club and jack off or somethin'? It's a little creepy... dudes like that come out of the woodwork for that all-girl shit."

Hard-up knuckleheads aside, those crowds are finding out what tastemaking Seattleites already know: The Girls are one of our most entertaining exports, owners of absurdly fun, energetic hooks that owe plenty to the Cars and a ton of late-'70s glam-pop outfits. Yeah, they can scorch a club with their loud, crunchy riffage, but songs like "Flesh" and "Return to Zero" also contain enough affected vocal squeals and yelps to make the Girls the perfect band for that "last dance of the year" scene in any '80s teen flick.

It's gone over well so far--the band (which includes guitarists Vas Kumar and Zach Davis, bassist Ricky Way, and drummer Mario) sold out its stock of new self-titled EPs only a few days into a recent month-long tour--but Brown knows there's still a lot of road ahead for the Girls.

"We started out calling it the 'Payin' the Dues' tour, then changed it three nights in to the 'Moppin' the Floors' tour, and now we've finally settled on the 'Fat and Out of Control' tour," he laughs. "We're a long way from home and we made 35 bucks last night, but when you're driving from one city to the next, blasting some Zeppelin and lookin' out the window watching everything go by, you just get a smile on your face like, 'This is it!'"