Five Minutes with The XYZ Affair

Fritz: How was your CMJ?


Alex Feder, The XYZ Affair: It was good, actually. It was our first time playing CMJ. We've spent four years applying and getting rejected.

Fritz: Yay you.


Alex Feder, The XYZ Affair: It's a funny thing. I was just talking to another band about this today. But actually, Sam, our drummer, he plays in another band. His band got officially rejected from CMJ. But they still played at three official CMJ shows...But we were sort of pessimistic going in because our shows were at such odd times.

Fritz: Have the Williamsburg and Brooklyn scenes affected your songwriting?

Alex Feder, The XYZ Affair: I wouldn't say so. I listen to a lot of pop music and that's sort of what I think of our sound being. There's a lot of bands I like. I really like The Hold Steady and Grizzly Bear. We actually played today with a band called Ghost Cube. They were kick ass. But no, I mean, we have a pretty wide array of stuff that we draw from. Our main thing is always super-strong melodies. We are way into the Beach Boys and Motown stuff. I really like Michael Jackson and Prince, anything catchy.


Fritz: Any post-CMJ projects in the works?

Alex Feder, The XYZ Affair: Right now, we're a little bit financially strapped. We're totally independent, so everything that we do totally comes out of pocket. We were originally doing this three EP project, where we would release three 3-song EPs. But it ended up just sort of eating away our cash and we had a lot of van troubles. So when we released the first EP, we noticed that the single and video were the only things being written about. After our tour to Georgia, we're going to record three songs again. But we are probably going to release them one at a time. We hope to release a full length in 2009.