Shiny Toy Guns

MEMBERS:

Jeremy Dawson (keyboards),
Chad Petree (vocals/guitar/bass/keyboards),
Carah Faye Charnow (vocals),
Mikey Martin (drums/percussion)

Album:

We Are Pilots.

Release Date:

October 17, 2006.

You'll Like 'Em If You Like:

The Killers, The Faint, Garbage, The Rapture, Depeche Mode, The Sounds.

Shiny Toy Guns on Shiny Toy Guns in Five Words or Less:

Something you can dream of.

Since Carah and singer/guitarist Chad Petree both do vocals, how do you decide who sings what?
Jeremy: Technically, it depends on what key this song is in. Lyrically, as we write the songs, it's not like we go, "OK, today we�re gonna do a girl song and tomorrow we're gonna do a boy song." We just go for it, and it just goes in its own direction. At the end of the day, it makes itself appear. I think lyrically would be the driver that determines who's going to sing it because we can change it to be in the right range and key. It's about Chad's personality and Carah's personality -- who's comfortable with what. We haven't argued about it. It's like, OK this is obviously something that Carah's gonna sing, or it's obviously something Chad's gonna sing. It kind of just takes shape. We try to keep it as evenly as possible, but that�s the only intervention.

Are you guys ever afraid of the Gwen Stefani/No Doubt syndrome where the female lead singer gets famous because she's a hot girl, while all the guys are totally ignored?
Jeremy: A lot of people's first impression is, "Oh it's cool, this is a Gwen Stefani-thing, or this is a blah blah." But all they have to do is come see a show, and they'll see it's truly a group of people performing. I look at it as a package, a universal unit. It captures all demographics, and that's the point of it. It's not a hot girl and hot guy thrown in the front. Our goal is to have a centralized system of songwriting and song interpretation where your 70-year-old grandmother and 7-year-old cousin, every color, shape, or size, is gonna hear and say, "Yeah, that applies to me."

How did you choose your band name?
Jeremy: We took it off a track on the album, "When They Came For Us." That song is about people who don't really understand or think about consequences. They just do [things] without putting thought into it. [But] you make one decision and just don�t think about it, and it will affect you.