Brooklyn band the DownBeat Keys, made up of Kadahj Bennett (KB), Baldwin Tang, Andrew Root, Ryan Calabrese, and Jared Schneider, are hilarious. Or at least, that's what they'd like you to think when they're not creating hip-shaking funk tunes such as "Fluid," thats video premieres on Myspace today. Formed in New York's Hamilton College in 2008, the band has shared stages with Future, Bleachers, and Passion Pit, among others. In this Myspace interview, guitarist Root puts his tongue firmly in cheek when talking about the band's origins and music. When asked to finish this sentence: "We’re so funk that …", he quipped, “George Clinton once heard us and had a coherent thought."

Hometown: We’re really an East Coast mashup … Boston, Brooklyn, New Hampshire, Syracuse, Washington D.C.

Homebase: We played rock, paper, scissors and Brooklyn won.

Why are you called the DownBeat Keys?

It went down kind of like this:
Band: We should have a name.
Baldwin: How bout something with “keys” in it?
Kadahj: How bout “Downbeat Keys”?
Root: I dig it, but could you capitalize the B? Like “DownBeat”
Kadahj: I did, idiot.
Root: Well, asshole, I couldn’t tell because we’re talking not writing, so I can’t tell whether a word is capitalized or not unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence or a proper noun, in which case I can make the general assumption that you’re following basic grammar rules.
[Fist Fight]

What made you want to form a band together?

Sexual attraction mostly. We all met at Hamilton College. Cal thought Kadahj was cute in that grungy street-nerd kind of way, but then Kadahj fell for Jared and broke Cal’s heart, but Cal just doesn’t realize how great he is so he keeps clinging to that suburban white-picket fence fantasy with Kadahj if only Kadahj could see how happy they could be together. How could he not see it?!
Voila, band.
I guess Baldwin and Root were involved somehow as well.

How did you discover music?

Well it’s kind of different for all of us … I found it under a rock. Baldwin received a Little Tykes keyboard at the age of three, and by seven had written his first symphony. Hailed internationally as a prodigy, he just got too famous too fast, and without the proper guidance, turned to a life of drugs and crime and lost everything by age eleven. Kadahj heard music for the first time at age 34 and instantly fell in love. Jared thinks he heard music once, but it could have just been that weird sound of blood rushing in your ears like when you hold a seashell to your ear and you can hear the ocean but it’s not really the ocean, it’s just blood rushing in your ears. You know?

Who are your biggest musical influences?

Our biggest musical influence is probably that weird sound of blood rushing in your ears like when you hold a seashell to your ear and you can hear the ocean, but it’s not really the ocean it’s just blood rushing in your ears.

Who would you love to collaborate with?

We get a lot of inspiration from nature. At the moment, we have plans do a session with a pod of Blue Whales. It’s gonna be sick—we’ve all got dive suits and those electronic crowd control cattle prod things like they have in Minority Report. The current plan is to surround the dominant female and prod her until she sings, then record the results. Greenpeace are being suuuuuch a pain in the ass about it though. DownBeat Keys: The Blue Whale Sessions. Album drops probably never.

What's the craziest thing a fan has ever done to you so far?

OK, so this is actually a serious answer. Fans get really aggressive sometimes. Particularly guy, fans believe it or not. It’s usually the musicians that are the most insane. Like one time we were playing this frat party at Bucknell University and this dude asked if he could freestyle so we said ok, and he grabbed the mic and literally just said “She moves so sweetly” over and over for like 187 bars and eventually we just stopped playing and then he stopped six or seven minutes later.

After the show, we’re hanging out and he comes up with an acoustic guitar in his hand and is like, “Yo can I play you a song?!!!” and starts playing this chord progression and singing the same god damn “She moves so sweetly” over and over again, but playing so aggressively that his hand started bleeding and he was bleeding all over the guitar but he just kept singing and playing. We were frightened, though strangely impressed by his dedication.

Did you have a lot of input on the video creation of the song "Fluid"?

No. We hired a director to do the music video but didn’t read the fine print of the contract. The ink was still wet when he bagged our heads and threw us into a white panel van. Nobody is sure how long we were out for, but when we woke up, we were immaculately styled and instructed to dance for hours in front of a green screen while unshaven men jeered and threw single dollar bills at us. Three weeks later we got a VHS tape in the mail.

What's your songwriting process like?

Well, things got pretty dull in the back of the panel van. Making fun of Cal’s Macklemore haircut got old after a week or two, and “Hey, Jared Stupid-Face” only lasted a couple of hours. Eventually we just started singing five-part harmony.