How do you feel about being compared to The Strokes and The Vines, when what you do is so much more original and punk rock?

Well somehow, I think it's inevitable when you're playing with guitars, drums, bass and vocals like a lot of those people doing the new rock. I don't care too much about it, I mean it's for the people who really are interested in it, they will see that we're different, but if they like The Vines they'll probably like us.

So, what does influence you guys?

Our music tastes are pretty retro and we listen to a lot of 60s rockabilly and that sort of stuff and also lately we're getting into some hillbilly country yodel and stuff like that. But our major influences are like 60s rock & roll and rockabilly like everybody else but also a bit of psychedelic garage.

Me and Halvard (the singer), we're extremely big into the vinyl sound. We went for a week to the states not long ago and Halvard and I spent so much time going through record shops, I lost count of how many we went to. There was lots of money to be spent. So we don't know how we're going to survive back here in Sweden where we don't have many good record stores.

How long have you guys been together?

The core of the band has been together for four or five years, I've only been in the band since August or so, the old guitar player on the record, he got a hearing disorder.

What do you guys like to achieve in a live performance?

We wanna put out a whole bunch of energy, lately I've been noticing that at the end of the concerts now, I've started smashing my guitar into the amplifier, I've never done that before, you never know when it's going to happen. You just walk off stage and go 'oh no, not again! Why did I do that?' We've also been trying to play pretty short gigs now for around half and hour, which includes a lot of dancing, moving around, screaming as much as we can on half an hour, like an explosion, then walk off stage like zombies at the end - just good old rock & roll!

How did you go down over in the US?

Well, I guess you can say it went good, it was pretty much a showcase scenario. The first gig at CBGBs was pretty lame, but it got better and better. In Austin it was good, The Spacelab was the best, we had so much time off that for us it was a bit of a vacation, there was good weather when we had four days in Austin, it was so much different to Sweden now, you could walk around in your jeans with rips in them and not feel the cold. It was a good trip for the band to make, we got more together, we like hanging out together and being on the road, some bands I guess break up over these things, but we can't get enough of it.

Have you been to the UK or Australia yet?

No, we haven't. The UK has been pretty cold with their response from the album.

As for Australia, we've been talking about it, now that the record's coming out over there we wanna go. We've heard about those festivals like The Big Day Out and stuff like that. Like I said, I don't know yet, if we get any good offers we come for sure, that'll be amazing to come to Australia to play. We wanna gig the world!

What feelings do you like the crowd to go home with after The Teenage Idols live experience?

Hopefully they like it so much that they dance and get all crazy and get a wild feeling.

Do you think fashion is just as important today as the music is?

Somehow I think all that's important is some kind of image. It's important for the people to get interested in a band and stuff. It shouldn't be important, but I guess it is these days.