These four guys from Newmarket have been busy: a Letterman appearance in the spring, signing with a new label in July, completing their first U.S. headlining tour in August, and sharing the stage with The Killers and Smashing Pumpkins at Toronto’s Virgin Festival. Rolling Stone raved about the band’s debut EP, A Lesson in Crime, and they landed at 64 on Entertainment Weekly’s top 100 list for 2007. We caught up with keyboarder-vocalist Graham Wright and drummer Greg Alsop to get the latest on the band.

Tell me about Mean Beard Records?
Wright: Mean Beard is the record label we invented. It will now be seen on Desperate Housewives.
Alsop: It’s a record store there and will appear in the new season. We have an in at the show, a co-owner of Mean Beard Records. He is a script consultant, and they needed a name for a record store. My dad is a big [Desperate Housewives] fan, and our contact got him an autographed picture of Teri Hatcher. Hopefully that makes up for missing Father’s Day—I think we left for Europe that day.

How have you used the Internet to enhance your exposure?
Alsop: The entire music industry is using the Internet more than even two years ago.
Wright: Even MySpace. We thought, Guess we’ll get an account; they put your songs up for free. And now it’s our primary method of communication with fans. We have our fancy Web site; it’s slick and cool, but everyone goes to MySpace, which doesn’t work half the time and looks terrible. It’s a double-edged sword, because the concept of digital music being so widely available is great, especially when you’re a start-up band like us—a lot of people don’t want to take a chance and spend about $15 on a seven-song EP. Hopefully they download it and like it, and come to your shows and buy your disc. But I think people should pay for music. I mean, it costs money to create music. It costs money to live while you’re creating it. I think it’s great to get music for free—God knows I’ve done enough of it—but there is an attitude of entitlement that people get: you know, “This is music, and it should be available for everyone—why should I have to pay for it?”

What’s happening with the debut LP?
Alsop: We were in Connecticut to record for 22 days in September. Writing a full album is a really daunting task. Before, we amassed songs over a couple of months, then threw them on an EP. But we’ve never set aside time just to pump out a bunch of songs.
Wright: It was a lot more of a struggle this time around. We did the first seven songs for the EP for fun—before any of this happened, before we had any aspirations for success—just knocking off songs and having a good time. We’ll never have that again, where there’s no pressure. As much as you try to put it out of your mind, you know people are gonna hear it and judge it, and that your livelihood relies on people liking it and buying it.

Why did you make the jump from local label Paper Bag Records to Omaha-based Saddle Creek Records?
Wright: Paper Bag came along when we were nothing. They’re the reason anyone paid any attention to us. They gave us a great kick-start. They pushed us in the U.S. as well, where they had never really sold much before. But then we spoke to a bunch of labels we thought could offer something more. I have much bigger goals with our LP, and Saddle Creek showed that they can move records—they did it with Bright Eyes, who sold hundreds of thousands of records. Saddle Creek is also at the forefront of the digital world, which really appeals to us. And it’s a one-album deal, which is what we wanted, and they were the only [label] to offer that.