One thing I love about Myspace is the ability to find music that I might not come across anywhere else. I can spend hours going from one profile to the next, finding new music from around the world, including pictures, videos, and information about the musicians.

During my Myspace musical travels, I found The Rayees. I’ve been dancing in my living room, and singing along with their music so much lately, I just had to find out more about them. Here’s my interview with Blue and Merrick, also known as The Rayees.

HIH: According to Myspace you’re in Paris, London, New York, France. Besides inquiring about underpants the first question that pops into my mind is… Where are you from originally?

TR: We’re both French frogs from freaky frenchy France but we travel a lot cos we like to jump around like the French frogs we are. By the way we’ll soon be back in London.

HIH: Give us some back history about your dynamic duo in music. How did you go from Merrick and Blue to The Rayees?

TR: We’ve always been singing, alone or together. We sang our little heart out through life, we sang at home, in our rooms, in parks, on benches, and at school too. Especially in our high school bathroom cos the accoustic was just amazing. One day we wanted to go see Bridget Jones the movie, and we were broke. So we sat down in a subway station in Paris and started singing acapella. In no time we had enough money to go see the movie. It was supposed to be a one time thing, but we decided to do it again. That’s when we really learnt how to harmonize, and mix, twist and play with each others voice. Then one day, years later, we ordered pizzas, and because eating pizzas make us happy and optimistic, we took our black guitar and started to write our first song. It’s called A Stranger. It was a year and a half ago. We wrote something like a billion songs since then.

HIH: Do you two collaborate on everything? Who writes your songs?

TR: We both write the songs, sing the songs, and make out with the fans. It’s pretty much the Rayees philosophy, doing it all together, the pictures, the videos, the singing, the recording, and yeah, the making out part too.

HIH: You have so many cool videos on the internet, reminiscent of a young MTV when they actually played videos. Yours are authentic and creative, with unique graphics, and visuals that express not only your music but the style of The Rayees. Tell us more about the making of your videos.

TR: Well, it won’t surprise you, but we make all our videos ourselves with our cheap camera and our cheap clothing and cheap acting. And we love it that way. We usually write the scenario on a single sheet of paper and then we start doing our thing, dancing, acting, farting on each other’s face. We have friends – family – and two dogs helping us in the making. It’s a lot of fun really.

HIH: Both of your voices are very powerful yet they compliment one another. Is this how your personalities work together most of the time?

TR: We’re pretty much the same, but different. We grew up together, and we spend most of our time together, we laugh at the same jokes, speak at the same time, so we’re pretty much like twins. Except we don’t look the same. But we do wear the same clothes sometimes.

HIH: The Rayees sound has a great sense of retro, vintage and modern all whirled up together. What are some of your artistic influences, musical or otherwise?

TR: We’re always trying to cultivate our retro sound and looks, we’re both big fans of Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, and we love to drown ourselves in the Beatles colored and psychedelik world, so yeah, of course, when it comes to make videos, we’ll try to make it look like a part of Ken Kesey’s acid test, and when we sing a song, we try to pretend we’re singing it with flowers in our hair in San Francisco golden gate park.

HIH: It seems that both of you are not the least bit afraid to reveal yourselves in videos and pictures, lots of star pasties and bodies in interesting poses. Do you feel this free spirited while playing live?

TR: It’s actually a lot worse. When we are filmed on stage, the filming staff will probably have to use a lot of blurring effects and “beep” sounds. It’s awful, it seems like we just can’t keep our clothes on. But honestly, we don’t have any shame about that. It’s just the way we like it. Barefeet, barechests, and slutty.

HIH: I dig The Rayees fan art on your Myspace blog. Did you hold a contest of some sort or do fans just make artwork and send it in?

TR: God no. All those contests on myspace kinda freak us out. There’s a new one every day, there’s always some price of some sort to win, but if you look closer, it’s just some band trying to promote themselves. Alanis Morrissette is having her own contest on myspace right now “you sing, she decides”. So no, no contest for us, at least not until we get as big as Alanis and make as much money as she does.

HIH: I’m constantly going to The Rayees Myspace profile so I can listen to your playlist. Where can I purchase or download your music?

TR: Well, you can’t right now. Unless if you want to sneak in our recording studio and steal all the files and upload them on the internet, which would be kinda mean. We’re in talks with different labels and so we won’t release the music ourselves (on Itunes for instance) til we see where those negociations go. But the road to our first album is long and hard.

HIH: The Rayees did Spain recently, where else have you performed and where will you be in the future?

TR: Well, we used to perform much more than we do now, since we started to sing at a subway station we didn’t really care how big or crowded – or clean – was the place. But lately we’ve mostly spent our time recording in studio, and we’re also, thanks to the help of a French music label, getting our own professional band. We’ll start rehearsing with them soon and our next concerts will be much better, but don’t worry, we’ll still strip down our clothes. Love and licks baby.

You can listen to The Rayees, and watch more of their creative videos on Myspace, Facebook, and Youtube.