Matt and Kim

Accidents can be funny things. On one hand, you might stub your toe and wreck your car. If you're Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino, you might wind up forming a band. As Matt tells it: "Kim and I were just screwing around in our bedroom... not like that, not that kind of screwing around: we were screwing around with the instruments. Kim was trying to figure out how to play this drum set that her friend had given her, and I had this cool keyboard that I'd found a long time ago, and I thought it was about time I learned how to use it. And then a friend found out that we were doing that and said that we had no choice but to play a show with his band, and we could not think of a name for the life of us, so they just listed us as our names and it stuck. We played three shows at an art gallery in Queens and we were completely terrified, but I guess we have supportive friends."

It's been five years since those bedroom experiments, and Matt and Kim have gone from strength to strength. Their first album, a self-titled effort released on the unbearably cool iheartcomix label, attracted attention from tastemakers and audiences, as did their hyper-kinetic performance style. They've emerged from the basements and warehouses of Brooklyn to play shows and festivals across the US, as well as Europe and Australia. This change in venues was daunting at first, according to Matt: "The first summer we started doing festivals we had Sirenfest and Lollapalooza and these other festivals scheduled. We showed up at our first one, which was Sirenfest, and there was the press barricade, which put the crowd 30 feet away from us. We're used to playing on the floor with the crowd circled all around us! So we were thinking 'how the hell is this going to work?' and we just did what we do, which is be ourselves and chat with the audience. People seem to really respond to it."

Despite this ascension in status, Matt and Kim are still fiercely DIY. The pair recorded their follow-up album Grand at Matt's childhood home in Vermont, where they laboured over their sound for far longer than their first effort: "It was good in the sense because we got to make an album that we were really proud of, but it was also bad in that it took up every bit of free time we had for most of 2008. I started losing my mind a little bit. We'd come home from three weeks on tour and have three days off, and it meant editing songs or tracking vocals for 14 hours a day for the three days we were home. It ended up taking nine months, about the same amount of time as a baby but with more pain and discomfort."

The effort was worth it though, and Grand has got them back out on the road again, playing shows and living the life. Success hasn't changed them one bit, reassures Matt: "We're just doing what we've always done. We're on tour with Cut Copy right now and playing to some of the biggest crowds we've seen for a single show, but we're chasing after Cut Copy in this little van not sleeping. They're in the big bus with the overnight drives and the bunks, but it's okay - we don't scoff at them that much."

Grand is out now through Popfrenzy. Matt and Kim play the Oxford Art Factory 

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