We have your answer. The Nowherenauts.

Don't be intimidated by the name.The name came from a gig one night where the answer to the question was, "No, we're not" and, voila! It evolved into the swanky spelling, Nowherenauts. Feel free to read all kinds of existential cosmic deep meaning into the name, but having a cool name isn't the only thing this young talent pool has up their sleeve. The truth is this band has the magic. That sticking power magic. Even the New York Times is onto their dark secret, gushing [they are], "effective miners of late-80s and early-90s indie rock, with a ferocious lead guitarist�and a kinetic lead singer."

We simply think they are a wonderfully addictive, blithely intoxicating indie band that demands attention.

The Nowherenauts, a sometimes three-piece, four, if you include live drummer Tony Franco, which we do, is made up of brother-sister duo Anders and Sophie Kapur, and Hunter Lombard. The young indie band hails from New York and have scrawled their sound on iconic venues such as The Knitting Factory, where they held their album release party for their debut album, as well as The Living Room and The Bowery Ballroom.

antiMusic caught up with the band after their CD release and all we can say is wow. They have an impressive maturity well beyond their years, demonstrating they not only have musical chutzpah, they also have the cool confidence of some of rock's greatest legends. This is one band to watch for.

Talk about how this project is different from other prior projects/bands you've been in?

Hunter: This band is a lot more professional and productive than other bands I've been in. Instead of sitting around in my room just hanging out, we have an actual rehearsal space and we set up and get to work right away.

Anders: Prior to the NowhereNauts, all the bands I was in were just kind of me and some friends blowing off steam. There's definitely something to be said for playing music for fun and partying with your friends, but I really like the fact that I'm finally with a group of people who want to take the band thing seriously and really go for it. We also have a great support network to help us every step of the way, and I'm really happy with the way things are going.

Does "sibling rivalry" make its way into your music? (Or are you more like three's company?) How does it benefit you? Do you "get" each other more? Do you try harder?

Anders: I don't really think that "sibling rivalry" makes its way into the music, but we do have our moments at practice and outside. Since Sofie and I grew up in the same house together, there's nothing that isn't forgotten by the next time we see each other and we really understand each other. So, in a way, I think that kind of closeness actually helps us keep our cohesion as a band.

Sofie: Sibling rivalry doesn't really affect the music as much as how we act around each other. We do kind of act like siblings, so we bicker a little once in a while, but we work well like that. No one is afraid to express an opinion because we're totally comfortable as a band. I do think that I try harder, because I want to make a valuable contribution to whatever we're working on.

Finding Hunter was a serendipitous adventure. Well, okay, an introduction. How has the band cemented its vibe now that you've played together a few years? Do you hang out outside of playing music or do you prefer to take a breather?

Sofie: After three years of playing together we've gotten incredibly comfortable with one another's styles. It's helpful because now I can kind of anticipate what Hunter might play on her guitar or how Anders bass riff might develop and I work with that, trying to help find the vibe for each song.

Hunter: We know each other really well by now because we've been playing together for a large chunk of our teens. Anders is well-acquainted with my friends since he goes to NYU and we have a lot of opportunities to hang out with one another outside of the NowhereNauts. Sofie can't always make it to everything since she still lives in New Jersey.

Anders: We hang out outside of the band a lot more now than we used to, and we always have a great time. Hunter is a really good friend of mine. I live and breathe this band, so the more time I get to spend around my band mates the better!

Tony (The NowhereNauts Drummer): There will be plenty of time to hang out with each other on tour, that's for sure! That's something we are all really looking forward to.

What do you consider to be your major success-outside of playing the Bowery and a few of the New York clubs?

Hunter: Just the fact that we completed and released a record (we had another one that got shelved) seems like a pretty huge success to me.

Anders: We just had our record release show on May 4th, which was one of the most fun experiences I've had playing in a band. Not only was it one of the better shows we've ever played, but it was just so satisfying finally releasing what we'd been working on for months and months.

Who does the majority of the writing?

Hunter: Sofie writes most of the lyrics, but Anders and I bring in most of the musical ideas and jam on them.

Anders: Writing is a group effort. Generally, we mess around on our instruments until we find something we like, and then the song develops organically from there. Recently we've been trying different approaches, such as writing songs alone or in small units and workshopping them as a group. Those songs have been coming out really well, so I'm interested to see what direction our songwriting takes in the coming year.

Sofie: I tend to write a lot of the lyrics simply because I come up with them as I'm developing my melody. Other times, though, only one or two of us will write a song and then bring it in for everyone to work on and contribute to.

Where is your favorite place to write? Can you describe it?

Hunter: My room. It's small and dark and houses all of my music equipment.

Anders: Our manager, Kevin, has this rehearsal space out in Williamsburg that he shares with a few other guys. It's full of gear: guitars, drums, weird electronic instruments, vintage amps, all sorts of weird percussion things. We wrote about half of the album there last summer, and I just love the vibe. It's a really comfortable setting, walled in by all that equipment, with dim lighting and this crazy cubist mural on one of the walls. I'm really happy with the songs we wrote there.

Tony: I love the rehearsal space Kevin has in Brooklyn, but nothing beats the Kapur family basement for writing songs. There's a kitchen upstairs, where Sofie's twin sister loves to cook, and a grassy field is a few steps away if we ever need a break.

What is the most important element of a song, the melody, the lyrics, the vibe, the arrangements?

Hunter: I think that the melodies and the vibe are what I look for in a good song.

Anders: This is going to sound like a cop out, but I think what's most important is that it sounds cool. It has to be a song that you're going to want to listen to over and over again, and you just have to do whatever it takes to get that one song to that point, whether it's with a catchy melody or some catchy lyrics, weird chord changes, or an interesting vibe.

Talk about your debut album? What was the most difficult part of getting the album made? What trials did you have to overcome personally, and as a band, to get the tracks exactly the way you wanted them? What is your favorite track? Who else contributes on the album?

Hunter: We really didn't face any problems making the album. The most difficult part was probably deciding on the artwork! The music was written really quickly over the summer, then we were in the studio for two weekends and that was it. Since we recorded to tape, we prepared by playing together a lot and practicing individually to a click track. My favorite song is "Try To Light My Fuse".

Anders: We recorded all of the songs on the album in a total of about 36 hours, which is pretty crazy when you think about all the work that goes into each individual song. So the main challenge was to work with the engineers to get our ten songs done from start to finish in that time. I think we pulled it off. Tony wasn't a full member of the band when we recorded everything, so our manager plays drums on every song of the record. And we also have a former member of Blame the Patient, Andrew Leopold, playing guitar on "Where is my Mind?"

What is your best track and why?

Hunter: I think, as of right now, our best track is a new song called "Backfire". We've been playing it at our live shows and it's really upbeat, and the verses have a three-part harmony that we all sing. It has a really great vibe to it.

Anders: I really love the version we recorded of "Where is my Mind?" It's a lot slower than the original Pixies recording and it's powerful in a different way. My favorite song of ours is "Try to Light My Fuse", which I love because it's just so damn catchy. My friends won't stop singing the chorus back to me.

Sofie: I think our best track is either "Over and Over" or "Try to Light My Fuse". Both are very upbeat and encourage dancing, which I like.

What track keeps you up at night?

Anders: I made a really glaring mistake on bass in the first track, "Rather be Haunted" that was kept in because, apparently, no one else was bothered by it but me. It happens right when the drums drop out after the bridge. I cringe every time I hear it, but I'm probably the only one who notices.

Sofie: I worried a lot about "Heat Stroke" because I would have liked to have spent more time on the vocals, but I suppose it's best not to dwell.

Can you give us a background story on one of the album tracks?

Hunter: I wrote the guitar riff for "Delightfully Distracted" while watching the movie "Hannah and Her Sisters". I brought it into rehearsal and it became the song it is now.

Anders: We tracked each song on the album as a full band, so we had to play each song exactly how we wanted it as a group before we went back through and did overdubs. While we were tracking "Rather Be Haunted", Kevin messed up and dropped out right after the bridge instead of playing right through. We liked the way it sounded when the drums dropped out, so we kept that in the final recording, and we play it that way at all our shows now.

Sofie: Hunter and I each wrote a verse of the "Try To Light My Fuse" lyrics. My verse is secretly about the groundhog that runs around my yard. I'll let you guys listen to the lyrics and figure that one out.

How do you blow off steam?

Hunter: I play guitar really aggressively, watch Arrested Development, and then go for a walk.

Anders: I play more music! Seriously, that's really all I do with my free time. But, otherwise, I'm enjoying the whole college dorm-living thing right now at NYU. There is no shortage of opportunities to blow off steam, trust me.

Sofie: When I'm tired my sister and I invite friends over to cook ridiculously elaborate meals and watch movies. It's not strictly "cool" but we get some great meals out of it.

What is your favorite recording equipment to use?

Anders: We used a MicroKorg XL on "Rather Be Haunted" and "Try to Light My Fuse" that we haven't really been doing live. But we're starting to phase that in more, so we're getting closer to that ideal of having the sound at the live shows and the recordings at the same level.

Sofie: We recorded this album on tape and it sounds great (though I wouldn't even know how to begin to use the equipment myself). I also loved all the mics I got to try. I tend to prefer mics with a warmer sound.

Is there anything different that you did in studio that you don't do live?

Hunter: Recording is a completely different process than performing live. When we record, I focus more on playing my parts properly and thinking about how I want them to come across. When we perform live, it's less about playing the parts perfectly and more about putting on a show.

Sofie: Recording's very different because you notice every single tiny mistake you make. As a result, I ended up re-doing songs or certain sections of songs to get them just right. Conveying the mood along with hitting the right notes is important live, but you notice everything when it's played back multiple times.

What was the best performance you've given to date and why?

Hunter: I have to say that our record release show was our best performance. We were just so happy and excited to be playing. And it was packed with people who were there specifically to see us, so it made us perform better as a band.

Anders: The record release show was at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. Everything went so well. We got to play on our own gear, we were able to get everything to sound exactly how we wanted it to before we went on stage, and we played to a packed room that was really enthusiastic about what we were doing on stage. We do this build-up/swell right before "Try to Light My Fuse" when we play it live, which kind of builds tension right before we kick into the song. The best feeling in the world was the moment we kicked into that song at that Knitting Factory show and I heard the crowd screaming for us over the music. I had never experienced anything like that before.

Tony: We took everything up a step for that show. We worked hard to make it our best one yet, and we knew we had accomplished that as soon as we got off stage. It really felt good.

What's your take on the music scene now with technology offering a multitude of outlets?

Hunter: I think it's really great that people have access to music from all over the world, and that they aren't only exposed to the music scene in their area, or what's being fed to them by the masses. People can always find something they like. I think that's really important.

Anders: As someone born in the 90s, I really have no concept of how promotion or anything worked before the Internet. It seems to me that even though there are so many ways to promote yourself now, there's still a lot of noise out there and it's easy to get lost. You still really do need to take the time to make those personal connections with the people who come to your shows and the other bands in your local area. But the fundamental reality of it is that the industry is changing rapidly in the way music is distributed and marketed, and to get yourself out there you really have to think creatively, even beyond social networks and the internet as a whole.

Do you think it is harder today to make it as a musician?

Hunter: I bet it is, but I can't really say since I'm not sure what it would be like to be a musician at any other time.

Sofie: It's definitely harder, if not because of the amount of talent out there, then because so much is expected now. It seems that to really make music into a lucrative career, you have to know how to market yourself more than anything else. Sometimes it's intimidating to think of how many people want to do this for a living.

Tell us more about the name change from "Blame the Patient' to "The NowhereNauts"

Anders: Blame the Patient was something else altogether, and that situation was a whole mess that I don't want to get into now. The name NowhereNauts came about as a necessity, but I really do like it better. I think it suits us better and I'm more inspired now than I ever was to make music.

Sofie: We named the band The NowhereNauts because when anyone said that we were Blame the Patient we'd respond "No we're not." The hardest part about naming the band was figuring out how to spell if after we had the idea. Think of all the possibilities and alternate meanings!

You mention Jack White as a huge influence in another interview, what is it about White that you admire the most? How did he affect your take on the music scene as a whole?

Anders: Ask Hunter about this one!

Hunter: I haven't kept up with him recently, but I admire his guitar playing and his ability to really captivate his audience. Jack White basically got me started playing music. I saw him 20+ times from the age of 12-15 (I was a little obsessed), so he's had an undeniable impact on me as a musician.

In what ways do you want to see your sound progress? What kind of risks are you looking to take in the future?

Hunter: I would really love to have a huge, huge sound and take more melodic risks.

Anders: I don't want what we've done in the past to dictate our sound going forward. I think it's kind of natural for every band to look at their sound as a constant work in progress, and we are no different. I'm not going to put limits on what we do in the future. We have been experimenting more and more with electronic instrumentation and effects, as well as interesting chord structures, progressions, time signatures, and vocal harmonies. I'm excited to see how our second album turns out.

Tony: Our sound could go anywhere at this stage really, so as long as we view it as getting better. That's what's important.

If you could share the stage with anyone who would it be?

Hunter: LADY GAGA. (and Jack White, St. Vincent, Tegan and Sara, Kathleen Hanna, Arcade Fire, David Byrne, and Fever Ray�..)

Anders: There are way too many to list. Obviously all of our idols like St. Vincent, Arcade Fire, the Pixies, etc. Other than that, though, I've always wanted to be one of the trillion members of the Polyphonic Spree. They look like they have fun, even if they do seem like a cult.

Tony: It would take a while for us to collectively decide, but my pick? U2 or Coldplay.