Interview

Name: Seth Bogart, of Hunx and His Punx. Where do you live? In Oakland, California. Honestly it's pretty desolate, and I want to move to San Francisco this summer. What's the first song you ever wrote? I've been writing songs since I was 14 so I have no idea what it was! It was probably about a male movie star. You tour a lot. Lately all the time. I love it. The last tour we did was with the band Girls and before that it was opening for [recently deceased] Jay Reatard, who I deeply miss. What was the best part of your last tour? I have a major crush on a friend of mine and I tried to bring him to our van during one of our shows but I forgot the keys. We had nowhere to go, so finally he pissed in my mouth in the parking lot in front of these dudes who were trying to sneak in through the back door. What makes a good performance for you? Really good stagewear and a couple of cocktails. An enthusiastic crowd can help but sometimes I go way crazier if people look bored and horrified. Whats' the best venue for Hunx and His Punx? We played a family Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas called Baby Acapulco. There were literally hundreds of families eating while we played. I think my pants came off and the cops almost came. What's the last song you wrote? I've been writing three songs at once for our new album. One is called "Magical Feelings" and it's about that same guy I have a crush on. Another is called "Blow Me Away," which is about my fathers suicide.  The other one is called "The Boys Don't Like It" which is about breaking up. Do you get letters about about being a role model? I get some odd letters, but I love it.


A COLLECTION OF SINGLES BY HUNX AND HIS PUNX: GAY SINGLES, IS OUT NOW ON MATADOR/TRUE PANTHER.

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Derek Davies and Lizzy Plapinger aren't your garden variety indie music fans. While most of us  will digest next week's SXSW music festival in Austin through the Hype Machine filter, they will be among those dictating it. As the co-founders of nascent NYC-based boutique label Neon Gold Records, the two will curate their first Austin showcase on March 18th, another  milestone in a series of recent victories for their two-year old label, known best for launching Passion Pit in 2008. Not bad for a pair of college seniors. (PHOTO: MARINA & THE DIAMONDS; ZAC SEBASTIAN)

Given their ages and pedigree (Davies, 22, is a film major at NYU; Plapinger, 21, majors in media studies "with a focus on music" at Vassar), skeptics might assume Neon Gold is a hip undergraduate vanity project that caters to the current whims of the Brooklyn-based art and music scene. They'd be mistaken: if anything, Neon Gold reverses the art/noise pop paradigm and is ushering literal, unironic "Pop" back into indie (and mainstream) acceptance. It's a zeitgeist-clinching formula that has proven especially successful in Europe, where Marina & The Diamonds and Ellie Goulding–two British female pop solo artists launched by Neon Gold–have charted very well. Stateside welcome seems just around the corner, too: Monday night, Neon Gold, alongside UK tastemaker Popjustice, co-hosted Marina & The Diamonds' sold-out debut US show at Brookyn's Bell House.

COLLEEN NIKA: What is the Neon Gold story?

DEREK DAVIES:  Lizzy and I have been friends since we were kids. We used to vacation ever summer at Martha's Vineyard together. So, we sort of grew up together. And our mutual interest in music defined our friendship.

LIZZY PLAPINGER: We always spoke about setting up a label, even as teenagers, but we planned to wait til after we graduated college. Then, in February 2008, in the middle of sophomore year, we decided we didn‘t want to wait.

DAVIES: So, we got the ball rolling. In September 2008, we launched our first 7" single:  Passion Pit's "Sleepyhead". It sold out instantly. To date, we've already released fifteen singles.

NIKA: How did you convince artists to let you release their material?

DAVIES: We were good about getting our name out quickly. We'd established a decent list of media contacts in our previous work–Lizzy interned at Vice and I ran goodweatherforairstrikes.com–so that helped facilitate the process.  Marina [of Marina & The Diamonds] approached us to release her first limited edition single "Obsessions." She was really amazing about getting our name out there.

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LEFT: Iggy Pop shows some skin at last night's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

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As is the fashion these days, the video for Devendra Banhart's new single, "Baby," features some fun celebrity cameos: It begins with summery stroll through the neighborhood with Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes and MGMT's Andrew VanWyngarden and ends with a journey–in a cigarette filter-shaped rocket ship–to some kind of space kingdom inhabited by GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan and host of animated aliens. The meaning of all this is for you to decipher. Clip above.

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