They sound like The Strokes, only more fun. They're two sets of brothers, but they don't fight. They've toured with the UK's hottest bands, yet they're from America. They're geeky, but not emo. Ooh, San Francisco's Scissors For Lefty are just a big mass of contradictions aren't they? We caught up with singer Bryan Garza to find out what floats their festival boat before their weekend gigs at Reading and Leeds...

Best Festival?
“Germany was really good to us, Southside and Hurricane. Lot of fun. Back in San Fran, we played the Market Street where you get 6’5 trannies introducing you and your whole city facing. That’s cool because we get to meet new bands and share lunch. We like seeing what our audience is.”

Worst?
“If we have bad shows it’s only on your end. Our worst show was in Coventry - it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t bad! Our worst festival? So far everything’s been pretty top notch. Our first show, people were creeping backwards from us. We were playing wrong chords, srings broke on three guitars and bass. So for one song we just sat there and stared at the audience. But you need that…”

Weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?
“I kind of like that stuff. I like the little quirks that make something odd in retrospect. Let’s see…Arctic Monkeys’ lead singer (Alex Turner) wouldn’t take his shirt off because of his love handles! They winked at us. (The band or the love handles? Ed.) Fiery Furnace, they’re such a modest band they never talked to us. We played five or six shows with them and they never said a word to us.”

Festival essential?
“Of course! We have our rabbit’s foot y’know. For those festivals overseas we keep taking pictures like we’re never going to come back so we always have our camera. That’s a good one. And we always have some beers y’know.”

Best festival band?
“I’m a big, big fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The 1990s - those guys are great. I love the way he says OK every time, like “I can’t get no satisfaction, OK?” I can’t wait to run into them again. Right now I’m just looking forward to hooking up with Dirty Pretty Things again. We shared their kit and bass and it’s interesting because you get overwhelmed at a (UK) show because you don’t realise how daunting The Libertines experience is over here. I have a feeling he (Pete Doherty) will make a comeback. The other day he was in the newspaper again for something naughty. Then again, we’ve got a lot of black sheep in our family…“

Scissors For Lefty play the Carling Weekend this weekend and the Indian Summer festival in Glasgow on September 2. Read on for more about touring, siblings and why British service stations rock...

“I’ve just walked off stage,” says a slightly bewildered Bryan Garza, explaining why his voice mail’s been on for the last 20 minutes. “It was good and I can still talk so I guess I’m in good spirits!”

Our rubbish time zone knowledge aside, Bryan is as cheery as Santa. It’s a good time for San Francisco’s most amenable garage band Scissors For Lefty, who, having just racked up a 20 date in 30 days UK tour and US tours with Dirty Pretty Things, Arctic Monkeys and The White Stripes, are returning to the UK for the Carling Weekend and another enormous stretch of touring. So - bored of us yet?

“No, come on now!” says Bryan, mock-scolding Aloud like a Trisha granny. “This is like a vacation, and we get to play shows. It’s what we want to do.” Living on service station food is an unlikely favourite. “We really love petrol station fruit. They have mangoes, blueberries.”

Having thus ascertained that Scissors For Lefty have never visited a service station on the A1, what brings them back to the UK circuit?

“They’re very similar to San Fran, similar cities,” he says. “(Last time) was great. We just thought we’d be going over to five or six people walking out, so we got fantastic people. Maybe because we’re so tall and quirky!”

Ah yes, the height and the quirkiness. Along with their seven-foot bassist James, and their name – “If we pride ourselves on anything it’s being playful” – Scissors For Lefty are all about fun. They might sound like The Strokes, but the geekier, more endearing version.

“Rated A to rated X we’re PG13,” says Bryan on the band’s absolutely lack of grumpiness. “We have to get along - we’ve only got two surnames.” No, they’re not gay – although the San Fran link clues you in otherwise – they’re brothers. Bryan and Robby Garza, and Peter and James Krimmel.

“It’s quite easy to get on because you know how much you can pick on each other,” says Bryan. “There are boundaries before you have to ruffle hair. James is a normal nice guy despite being seven feet tall. Peter is the typical older brother, always jacking him over. Peter’s great company, he was like my idol growing up, listening to Kiss and noodling on the guitar - and now I’m playing guitar!”

So, exactly how the hell do you form the Osmonds garage band? “We were going to college and trying to figure out what to do with our lives like anyone else. We found a good way to distract ourselves and got along. We didn’t have any bands (growing up), maybe friends trying stuff for a weekend once. I would cherish that: we’re the band. That’s it for us.”

While geekiness might have become part and parcel of most self-respecting US emo bands (viz, Weezer, Death Cab For Cutie et al), Scissors For Lefty fall firmly in the dirty garage sound bracket. It’s all a bit English, and you can see why they tour with so many Brit bands.

“I did college radio DJing for a couple of years and all the stuff that caught my ear was Britpop and stuff,” explains Bryan. “We’re only familiar with the hits usually, not so much the albums. I’ve no idea what their impression is of us. They’re probably going, ‘Who are these guys?’”

Unlike the Brits, they’ve yet to pick up any bad habits. “We never really learned how to be irresponsible,” offers Bryan. “We all had our day jobs and it’s good for us. (Now) we get to play with bands we adore, and sit there next to Jack White or the Arctic Monkeys!”

Whatever they’ve done – and the phrase “We have no agenda” is rolled out at least four times during the interview – they’re doing it right. All the band bar Robby have quit their jobs to focus on the band. “We’re riding the credit cards! We had our jobs, good jobs too. James lives in the studio, Peter’s on wife support. I live with my brother and Robby still works 2-9am with UPS. I sold everything, even my car.”

The money-saving even extends to touring. “We’re going to try and share suitcases and we always seem to share clothes anyway. I’m not going to bring running shoes this time… We got this case of two guitars instead of one. Then you save 130 euros.”

Bless them. With widespread US approval, a growing UK fanbase and a ludicrously catchy sound the future looks bright for the band. Not that Bryan’s convinced.

“I’ll be back to McDonalds in a year,” he cackles. “Next please! How you doing?”

Firstly, go to http://www.rebelado.co.uk and have a look at Rebelado's site. There is a vision called Militsa in the dancer's gallery who had every, and I mean EVERY man in the 300 capacity Spiegel tent on their feet agog with unadulterated awe.

I was among those slack-jawed neanderthals - and the image of her pert rear gyrating to those sweet samba rhythms will stay with me until my dying day.

Less exotic, and frankly, slightly less impressive than pure Brazillian sex, was Rodney P and Skitz, who played a blinder of a set in the Green Room. There was a heat of a different kind in this last minute replacement venue; the combined heat of dozens of sweaty bodies dancing to hip hop and jungle. Interesting to note, DJ afficionados, that Skitz played his entire set on CD, meaning the mixing was a bit choppy, but beat-perfect. Vinyl is dying, my friends, and I am less than happy about it.

The Extraordinaires deserve special mention (http://www.extraordinaires.co.uk) - these boys put on a show so good, the crowd literally would not let them stop. There were people jiving all over the shop, many showing a stunning disregard for the physical safety of their dance partners. Whilst jiving should probably not be attempted by blind-drunk amateurs, if you're having a mutually consensual fun, who the hell cares?

The Geisha Tent was the venue of choice for after-hours sleazy fun. My memories of this den of delicious iniquity are hazy at best, but, to quote Monty Python, "A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat."

Oh, alright then... If my memory serves, a geisha in a betasselled dress was shaking her thang in the lap of a chap who seemed quite pleased about the whole affair, but the fancy dress theme of the festival meant that it could well have been just another festival-goer.

The tent was so packed, people were sitting in the raised pebble gardens. There was talk of a much-vaunted "sushi train", which was supposed to be the cat's miaow. But I saw ne'er a track or chopstick. People were probably sitting on it, or in it.

If you ever have the chance to experience the Geisha Tent at a future Rumdo date, it comes highly recommended by your Gallant Researcher. I brave this toil, gentle readers, so I can serve you better.

We present The Young Knives, complete with nice suits, spectacles and an assortment of colourful names. Examples: a band title based on misreading ‘young knaves’ and thinking the mistake sounded cooler, a bassist called House Of Lords because he’s big and decisions go through him.

After years of toiling around nowhere, slowly, thanks to fear of phones and being terrible at promoting themselves (listen to next week’s Q podcast for more on that), the band got their big break when they won the 2005 Road To V competition - won this year by Keith and Bombay Bicycle Club - which let them open the festival and play their jaunty indie to thousands.

“That was quite daunting playing V,” says singer and guitarist Henry Dartnall, hidden behind an impressive pair of plastic glasses and a tie with horses on it. “There was quite a big crowd and a big stage, but I think we always wanted to do it so we just did get on with it and then do high-fives afterwards.”

The idea of a competition for music befuddled them somewhat. “That’s not what music’s about really, it’s about whether you like it or not. So, we were a bit wary of it, and luckily we won, otherwise we’d have been even more annoyed that we’d done it.”

Despite the fact they’re now plastered all over XFM and the festival roster, it’s been important for them to not take the whole thing too seriously. “We got chosen (for Road To V) at the last minute because someone dropped out, so we weren’t even in the competition really,” says Henry. “I don’t think people should get too strung up on doing it. A lot of people think it’s like their big break. It has helped us, but if we’d have lost it we’d hopefully have carried on and done the same sort of things.”

”There’s a lot of people who took it very seriously the year that we did it actually,” adds drummer Oliver Askew with a frown. “And this year in fact…trying far too hard. Don’t think it looks very good. We didn’t try at all hard. And we won it!”

”Well, we did our best for the performance but we didn’t think ‘Oh, we’re in with a chance’ so it was a bit of a laugh,” says Henry. “It’s a chance to get on telly, a chance to play a gig and that was a good way to approach it I think.

Yeah, how about the gigs?

“It’s the first year we’ve played loads of festivals, and they’re kind of different to doing normal gigs so there’s something definitely about playing to 8000 people that I quite like.”

“Is it showing off in front of 8000 people which is really good fun?” asks Oliver, deadpan.

“Yeah, there’s more people watching me show off, therefore I get a bigger buzz.” Buzz away Young Knives, preferably in the direction of these, our five Questivals.

Best?

H “Been to or played at?”

AF: "Either."

O: “Electric Gardens was good.”

H: “Yeah, I like the little ones. Things like Truck Festival I really enjoy. And (this was) the first year they’d done this Electric Gardens festival over in Kent, and it was a great atmosphere, lovely day, everybody  really positive even before you go on, none of that standing there all cross-armed and waiting for you to impress them. They wanted everyone to be good because they wanted to get mutual enjoyment out of the day.”

Worst?

HOL: “That one in France wasn’t a barrel of laughs was it?”

H: “Oh yeah, Furia. The problem with it was it was all outside on these little grass slops which formed a natural amphitheatre, and when it rained it just became mud slides. Unless you were drunk and then you could play in the mud, but for watching music it was kind of rubbish really.”

Weirdest?

H: “I’m just thinking about the Cuban Brothers’s stage show, that’s pretty weird. I mean, sliding along the floor completely butt naked in some water that you’ve just squirted down and that’s your stage show. Wiggling your nob around in a circle and jumping around. That just surprised me a little bit. But it’s all weird and wonderful at festivals.”

Essential?

HOL: “Beer.”

O: “Bar of soap.”

H: “Plastic bags for my socks.”

O: “Good one.”

Best festival band?

H: “I don’t know, I like being surprised at festivals really. I remember one year, years and years ago we went to go and see Moloko and never heard of them. They came on when they’d done their first album and although I can’t say I’m a particularly big fan of Moloko now, at the time it was something a bit new which was really cool and quite exciting.”

O: “Cuban Brothers.”

HOL: “Cos they get naked.”

H: “Things like the Pogues and Proclaimers are really good at festivals, but some bands don’t translate particularly well because they’ve got to entertain quite a lot of people. It’s quite hard work, with an audience in a field, making sure you’re involving everybody especially when they’re all just eating burgers, drinking beer and chatting.”

Joan As... Careers Advisor, Flight Attendant, Gym Instructor, Lollipop Lady

See this woman up here? This is your ears' new best friend. Along with Bat For Lashes, Camille and Regina Spektor, New York-based Joan As Police Woman and her band is one of a new breed of singer-songwriters making music that tears a new hole in your head just so you can learn how to deal with it. It's a highly emotive, gargantuan cabaret sound: filled with the worries, loves and scattered observations that are making women powerful again. These witchy folks have our lives at their fingertips.

Friday, Joan was playing the last night of her monthly residency at The Spitz near Liverpool Street. As usual it was hot, sticky and vile, and Joan cracked wry jokes about the heat with the easy familiarity that comes from playing a spot often enough. You couldn't see her, or the band as they sat behind keys, bass and drums. What was odd was you didn't need to. There was so much coming from what she was playing (from new record 'Real Life' released last week) that you could just sit and stare at your shoes, or the inside of your eyelids.

Now, we're not ones for doing that hippie-dippie closing your eyes crap at gigs. It makes us want to punch something. But this - crikey. That voice, that music - it makes you understand why the 60s happened, how people became so bewildered by the power of music that they had to dose themselves up to the eyeballs just to deal with it. Either way, you need to get this woman into your life now: check out the official site, befriend her on MySpazz, whatever you do: do it. It's outstanding.

'Real Life' is out now on Reveal

Having quietly owned the 90s electro scene with One Dove, done that singing on Death In Vegas's 'Dirge', collaborated with Massive Attack and moved onto solo projects in the early 2000s with albums 'Afterglow' and 'We Are Science' and EPs like 'Strung Out' and the Felix Da Housecat favourite, 'Substance', Allison is breaking away from electro for a more guitar-y sound on new EP 'Beneath The Ivy'. She's toured with everyone from Babyshambles to Massive Attack so we grabbed her to ask about her festival past before her new album turns up this autumn.

What's the best festival you've ever been to?

"Probably... we headlined Berta in Belgium with Massive Attack.  It's bigger than Glastonbury, it's very big."

What's the worst one?

"Good question... probably Reading.  Just because everything on the stage was running really late and the guys that were doing the stage were quite grumpy.  It wasn't such a good experience, but the crowd were brilliant."

Ever seen anything really weird at a festival?

"I'm sure I have, I can't remember."

Essential?

"A friend."

That's lovely.  Everyone else says toilet paper or whatever. What's the best band you've ever seen at a festival?

"Radiohead, Bertha, they were on the night before us.  I was thinking 'FUCK!  We've gotta be there tomorrow night'."

Read on for the full story of Dot Allison's new sound and what it's like to work with, er, Pete Doherty. Beneath The Ivy is out on Universal on August 28.

Dot Allison: former biochemistry student turned blonde Scottish electro queen circa 1993 and 2002. Ring any bells? How about if we namecheck Death In Vegas? Or Massive Attack? Pete Doherty? For someone who’s been a solo artist since 1996, Dot Allison comes heavily packaged in collaborator tape. She sang on Death In Vegas’s ‘Dirge’, spent two years on tour with Massive Attack and went on both of Babyshambles’s 2004 tours (where as well as playing with the band, she ditched her electro gadgets in favour of an acoustic guitar and a cover of – coincidentally – Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’).

As the singer in ‘90s dance group One Dove, she scored big popularity points with the Q and Select readership, then still gripped by their obsession with St Etienne. Their 1996 album, ‘Muted Dove White’, met with “muted success”. As Wikipedia explains, this turned out to be a poisoned chalice: “Other critics expressed disappointment that the album’s title had been changed at the last moment from the original working title, Sound.” For Christ’s sake.

Far from churning out the nerdy, hardworking sort of music that usually accompanies such nitpicking, Allison’s ethereal voice is now being used in more singer-songwriter bent. The reason you should care about her, aside from her collaborations, is that she’s far more than the sum of her parts. In appropriate name terms, the title of her new EP, ‘Beyond The Ivy’, isn’t too far from the truth. When not attached to a bigger name, Allison has a steely quality that balances out the breathy folk of her voice; every effect on the EP was recorded manually, and as a whole it’s surprisingly strong for something that initially sounds as forceful as a really cute puppy.

It’s still a big step away from the acid chillout of her 1999 album ‘Afterglow’, or the corrosive melodies that filled her Fischerspooner-esque LP ‘We Are Science’ in 2002. In fact, the timing is just plain weird. Electro is such big news now that she could have made a mint by re-releasing the Felix Da Housecat remix of ‘Substance’. So why go down the delicate female route? “It's partially a taste thing,” she says, curled up on what may well be the world’s squashiest sofa inside the Soho House library. “My tastes for the last album were what I was DJing, and it was something I wanted to express within those parameters – but your headspace changes. I've always loved Neil Young and Gram Parsons. Even when I was in One Dove I was writing guitar tracks, but it's taken me this long to release them in that format.”

That Allison has had the luxury of time has been partly due to her ongoing collaborations with other artists, all of whom have been men. “There's just so many of them around, in music,” she says, shrugging off the idea of some great conspiracy. “I've worked with female engineers and producers, and I'd like to sing a duet with a woman at some point, but it's still a very male dominated area when it comes to producers. There's not a lot of female producers or guitarists.”

One of these not-female guitarists was Pete Doherty, with whom she’s recorded a couple of tracks in addition to touring with him. In the usual PR precautions we’ve been instructed not to ask anything about him that isn’t music-related. Is there anything left to ask? Well, yes, now we come to think of it. How do you end up working with someone bundled up in that much of a media circus, which was gaining some serious momentum even back in 2004. Two poets walk into a bar, or what?

“It's like serendipity sometimes,” Allison says. “He submitted a piece of writing for my brother's fanzine 'Put Me In An Empty Sports Bag', so Pete was contributing short stories and poems to that. Ian was in touch with his manager as a result, so there was a conversation between Pete's manager and my brother that we should get together.” Hang on, isn’t that like how Hollywood goes dating? She shakes her head. “It's kind of the poetry scene.”

How was working with Pete? The tabloid neon sign around his name flashes and she shoots a carefully blank stare that states, ‘Don’t mess'. “It's a very interesting process,” she says deliberately. “You get to learn how they work, and it’s enriching you on a songwriting level.”

Fair enough. Allison and Doherty are avid poets, with the former taking an unusual attitude towards the ubiquitous MySpace blog. If you want a bitch-fest a la Lily Allen, or a video diary, you’re out of luck. Picking a day at random, “…between each charged refrain / my every breath my every sigh / blushes with meaning / of only you / of only you” was part of what she blogged on April 13. Dot Allison posts poems. Or song lyrics. What are they? “They are what they are,” she offers. “There are no rules. Some of them start off as poems, and I might plunder parts of them.”

Does it bother her to have such personal things put up for anyone to see? “I think that it's like a gift, to just put it out,” she says. “If it brings anything to anyone, great, but at the same time they're quite opaque.” Does she still enjoy making music? She thaws for a millisecond. “Yeah, definitely, I'm making the best album I've ever made. I love it. I don't think I could have made this album 10 years ago. I think you need experience to take you where you are.”

And what about that One Dove experience? How does it feel listening to the album 10 years on? “I feel very proud. Very proud. (It’s) the kind of album that seems quite timeless. I was a biochemistry student, and I met one of the guys in One Dove, and we decided to start a band together, pressed our own single, and put it out on white label, and (producer, Andrew) Weatherall picked up on that, and offered us an album deal based on that one single, and that's how it all started.”

Hmm, chemistry versus music. Would she ever be tempted to go back? “Probably not.” She smiles in that careful way, and you see why she’s releasing singer-songwriter stuff when it’s not fashionable, why she’ll always collaborate, why she gets away with releasing an album every three years: “I've never looked back.”

About four years ago, the whole idea retro took a big step back from the 60s and 70s to the 40s and 50s. Suddenly, you couldn’t move for burlesque dancers and underground cocktail soirees. Hell, in some parts of London you still can’t move for prim young things in gloves and bright slashes of lipstick. In the midst of all this cultural glamour, music was still chugging along scraping the barrel of the 80s, all firmly tied up in the fate of skinny men with vanity issues.

“At the beginning no-one took us seriously,” says Becki, singer in Brighton’s greatest hope, The Pipettes. “We were doing the toilet circuit which was full of the usual four blokes, two guitars and drums. Then there was us.”

Ah yes, The Pipettes. Poppier than any of the R&B sludge clogging up the charts and pening up the world of 60’s girl groups to people who probably haven’t even seen Dirty Dancing (why? WHY?), there’s choreographed dancing, harmonies, polka dots and songs about boys.

“It’s opened up new music to people that they weren’t aware of,” says Becki. “And yeah, it’s great to have stuff you’ve been doing for three years (“Year and a half!” chimes in Gwenno) getting a following.”

“It’s when you see people who are you, who know the words and dance along,” says Gwenno, the newest Pipette and a singer-songwriter in her own right. “There’s music for that now.”

With that in mind, let’s see how prim these ladies are in terms of festival experience. Hit it!

Best?

Becki: “Emmaboda in Sweden! It’s just amazing. We’re going back this year and it will be even bigger. We’ve got this new show we’re doing with more costumes, new songs and stuff and it will be really nice to show it off.”

Worst?

Becki: “Reading. The toilets! I went every years for six years and I’m just too old for it now.”

Rose: “It’s those blokes you get screaming “RAPE AND PILLAGE!” at night as well, and once the thrill of cheap pills has worn off, well… I grew out of it when I was 16!”

Band?

Rose: “Pulp at Reading!”

Becki: “Baxement Jaxx.”

Rose: “Ooh, and Scratch Perverts.”

Becki: “People seem to think you just want to listen to Coldplay and it’s frustrating have music being ignored.”

Essentials?

Gwenno: “Wet wipes, definitely.”

Rose: “Tobacco.”

Becki: “Knickers. You can turn them inside out if you're desperate.”

Weirdest?

Gwenno: “I never see anything weird at festivals! I always feel like I’m missing out.”

Rose: “Becki’s seen some weird shit though.”

Becki: “The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen was at Glastonbury 2000. I was camping backstage and there were these two grilles. You could see 50 men lined up and pissing though them. I laughed my arse off.”

You can see The Pipettes playing live at Ben & Jerry’s Summer Sundae on July 29, Get Loaded In The Park on August 26 (Cardiff) and 29 (London) and at Bestival on September 9. Their album, 'We Are The Pipettes', is out now on Memphis Industries.

With a name like that, arty photos are an inevitability

Limbering up for the joys of Lovebox this weekend, we decided to plump for the tatime in Cwmderi sounds of ex-Gorky's frontman, Euros Childs. The man is a genius. His songs are not only wonderful - varying from absolute heartbreak to all-out foot stomping indie - but he's got a good way with an anecdote. We took along one of our grumpiest muso mates, last known non-schadenfreude smile circa 2001, and he laughed and everything. No higher praise there. Check out Euros Child's MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/euroschilds.

"The Motley Crue of easy listening."

Glockenspiel, trumpet, triangle, maracas, sax...it's like someone covered themselves in glue and ran through the Early Learning Centre. Whiskycats certainly cheers up the dancing old boy, who having just bent our ear for five minutes about how music today doesn't amount to anything and it was so much better back in 1952 when he was teaching dance fresh off the boat from Malta. Whiskycats make lots of funked up noise, but once again, the OAPs entirely steal the show by inventing ever more marvellous ways of doing the dance. The old boy in blue gets Aloud Festivals up to do a bit of two-step with him. Mercifully this was not caught on camera. That man can move.

Opera House: upstaged by OAPs

Camden's Opera House were handpicked by Groove Armada's Tom Findlay to play today, so it's a bit of a shame that their moment of glory is being totally upstaged by the OAPs taking to the floor like they're on drugs. Opera House are a bit meh so that's not so bothersome for the rest of us, plus it does give you the awesome sight of the elderly swing-dancing to rock.

Alexander M: "It's one of the biggest deckchair gigs we've ever done."

There's a man with a guitar (you can see him) and a man with a double bass (who you can't. But we can.) and they're playing something, possibly jazz, probably not because there's a lap top which Alexander M keeps fiddling with. Sorry, we've just become monumentally distracted by the sight of all the crotchety OAPs from a moment ago getting up and dancing. One of them, an old boy in a blue shirt, is currently weaving his way from one side of the crowd to the other, doing what seems to be a two-step. It is immense.

Alexander's Festival Hall saying ruefully, "You should never go to the Royal Festival Hall on a first date unless you want to start an electronic band."