The Deadly Syndrome [ tickets ], a Los Angeles-based indie rock group, didn't wait long before scoring a record deal with LA's Dim Mak Records. Since that time, the rock quartet released its full-length debut, "The Ortolan," in September 2007, and backed it up with a slew of live shows.

Known for their seriously energetic performances, The Deadly Syndrome rocked many sold-out shows in the wake of their album's release, as well as a December slot with the indie-promoting Daytrotter Sessions.

The Deadly Syndrome is currently taking a short hiatus from touring following their recent gig at The Sunset Strip Music Festival.

California-based rockers The Deadly Syndrome [ tickets ] have wrapped months of touring behind their September release, "The Ortolan."

LiveDaily contributor Stacy Fuller caught up with the quartet--William Etling, Jesse Hoy, Michael Hughes and Christopher Richard--back before the tour got underway to discuss the group's chemistry, their catchy MySpace videos and more.

LiveDaily: Tell me a little bit about the Deadly Syndrome and how you guys got started.

Chris: ... We are a complex, in short.

Will: We're also a band, though, first and foremost. We started as a band and then became a complex. We've been playing for a year and a half ...

A year and a half?

Chris: Right, and then performing for about a year.

Are you guys L.A. natives?

Will: No, none of us. No.

You all met together at university, right?

Chris: No, though we all went to college. Jessie and Will both met at college. Mike met Jessie through friends, through a girlfriend. Jessie and I met through work.

Oh, okay.

Chris: They were sharing a girlfriend for about a week. (laughs) No no.

Jessie: We had two totally different girlfriends!

Chris: So Jessie's girlfriend had introduced he and Mike to each other and then I met Jessie through work and then ...

And then you guys just started jamming and the rest was history?

Chris: Yeah, it kind of started out as, like, a mini-recruitment, right?

Will: We were playing a lot of, like, Doobie Brothers covers and we started our own wedding band.

Nice.

Chris: Fraggle Rock somehow ended up in there.

Will: Then we started writing original stuff.

Chris: Maybe that's a genre we should be ... fraggle rock.

Will: We're all based on TV themes and Doobie Brothers.

So how did you guys go from just playing and then all of a sudden getting your first deal?

Chris: I have no idea.

Will: We just decided it was about time to start playing shows and half an hour later we had a record deal. (laughs)

That's hard to come by in L.A.

Jessie: It was pretty quick like that, though.

It was really quick. I know so many guys out here who pound the pavement and it's tough. It's a tough place to be.

Chris: My personal thing ... I think it's that none of us were really reaching. We were simply doing what we love with a group that we finally felt like, "Oh, this makes sense; there's chemistry, we're meshing well."

Will: After, like, two months of our practicing, I was still applying for an online marketing position.

Wow.

Will: I was gonna move home but I decided to stick around.

So what happened? Were you guys all ... obviously, you weren't sure that this is what you were going to be doing.

Will: Yeah, I'd come down here for school and I was pretty intent on doing something with that because I didn't ever go to school for music.

Mike: William has a master's in print journalism.

Wow.

Will: Thanks, man.

Mike: Hey, anytime.

Chris: He's the smartest of all of us.

What did the rest of you guys study?

Jessie: His bachelor's and ours, we're both film studies. Mike went to Brown University.

Nice.

Mike: I studied history and then I worked as a construction worker for two years.

Chris: And you were not really a jock but you played sports, but not a jock.

Jessie: All-American lacrosse, top scorer on the East Coast right here.

Chris: Until they knocked his noggin.

So how did you guys start playing music? Were any of you formally trained as musicians or did you just kind of pick it up?

Chris: No, we're naive artists, I think.

Will: I took piano lessons until I was five--no, from five until I was 10.

Mike: My dad bought me a guitar and really wanted me to play and I didn't for a long time. He bought me a full-size guitar when I was seven.

So how do you guys come up with your music? I know you guys all collaborate on writing, is that correct?

Chris: Yeah. I think that's what makes it sort of different every song. I think it's one of the hardest questions we've faced just because it's ...

It's different every time?

Chris: Yeah, we just try to stick with the ideas we love and then, you know, everyone kind of pitches in and we never know what we're going to end up with, we just know we want to love it and so that's really it.

How was it the first time in the studio recording?

Jessie: It was awesome. We worked with two really good producers: Nico Aglietti and Airin Older. [The studio is] in Nico's house, in his basement, and so it was really comfortable to just be there for two months straight.

And they are from the band Sugarcult, right?

Jessie: Airin is.

Chris: And Nico is simply a ... what did we call him? A music calculator. They're just both exceptional musicians and we really trusted their direction and any of their input. It was kind of their first opportunity to work on a full-length I think, right?

Jessie: Yeah, they've done a bunch of stuff but it hasn't ever been like, "This is real." It was just them doing cool stuff.

Chris: Yeah, but it was great. I think they're amazing people.

Jessie: And they're working on Alex from I'm a Robot's solo project.

Chris: Yeah, what is that ... Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros?

Jessie: Airin is an ethnomusicologist. That was his major, ethnomusicology.

Chris: We can't wait to get back in there and start recording and working on some new material. It felt really good and the guys even had a lot of different approaches, like going from tape to ... we had a lot of different options.

Jessie: And the three songs that we're playing today were written while we were in the studio.

Chris: Yeah, they all were. Sure were.

Jessie: I just realized that.

Chris: We were just like, "Oh, we have to do 12 songs? Uhh ..."

Jessie: We were talking to my friend, "Yeah, we've got 11 songs, no problem," and then we were like, "Guys, do we have that? We've got this one we've been working on and this ..."

How long did it take you guys to write the whole album?

Chris: To write it or record it?

To write and record.

Jessie: Well, like "The Ship That Shot Its Selef" was written three years ago now, but that just kind of existed and disappeared.

Chris: Yeah, that was well before the band was even together; that was before anything. We've been together for a year and a half.

Jessie: Yeah, and the writing started happening then--

Chris: What a vision Jessie, what a vision.

Jessie: --and there were three or four songs--"This Old Home," "The Ortolan" was written before--like, four songs were written while we were in the studio. So, yeah, I guess as long as we've been around, we've been writing.

You guys have been getting a lot of great press and buzz.

Chris: It's tricky because I don't think I've ever been in a position where you're working in a ... your bosses always tell you how you're doing in any other job, and, with this, we just kind of do what we do and then we put it out to the public, into the hands of the public, and, I don't know, it's really weird. We don't know--

You don't know until you get feedback...

Will: And you can't get promoted. You can get fired!

Chris: Right, you can fail. There are no job evaluations. We could really use one of those from, like Rick Rubin, if you ever want to.(laughs)

How exactly did you guys get hooked up with Dim Mak Records?

Will: It was a couple of ways, I think. My friend John Anderson knew and has worked with them before--I think he manages a couple bands that are on their label--and then another friend, Jana, also is friends with Ana, so then they kind of got double-teamed and got it from both sides. And so Luke was hearing about us and Ana was hearing about us. They wanted us to come play CineSpace and so we did and then Steve was there.

Will: That's the tough part about the first week of the release was for us to finally be out there and it was just like, "wow, people are listening to things that we've thought," just so deep, or not just deep, but they've been a part of us.

Mike: And then they go on MySpace and write comments about it.

Chris: They're judging us.

Will: They're giving us our job evaluations.

So I was checking out your MySpace page and all your little YouTube videos you've got going on. Those are great. Who came up with that idea of doing all these shorts before your album came out?

Mike: We wanted to do them and then it really started happening when our roommate and our other close friends who are all in film and video and stuff were willing to help us with them.

Will: So we didn't have to do any [additional] work. Our roommate Jason Green and our friend Barry Smoler [made them with us].

So are there going to be any more shorts to come?

Mike: There will be, but I think we're going to take our time.

Take a break?

Chris: Yeah, we want to do drama next.

Will: We really want to explore the depth of our characters. No, there will be more, but we want to start upping production value, I think, so we're going to wait until we can do that.