by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Between singer Maja Ivarsson's Blondie locks and the scruffy rock 'n' roll chic of her leather clad bandmates - Felix Rodriguez (guitars), Johan Bengtsson (bass), Jesper Anderberg (synths) and Fredrik Nilsson (drums) - the Sounds offer plenty of sights along with their major-chord power pop. Over the past two weeks, stateside viewers have seen and heard the Swedish quintet in a flurry of TV appearances that started at the top, on The Late Show With David Letterman.

For Bengtsson, the experience was memorable not only for its significance as their first stab at American TV, but for the miasmic bathroom surprise left by another guest, a fellow from the automotive Frankenstein show Monster Garage. "The smell, ugh! Like, where's the corpse?"

Comic relief is a blessing for these 20-somethings from Helsingborg, who've toured Sweden relentlessly since last summer in support of their debut single "Hit Me" and their subsequent album Living in America, which reached #4 on the Swedish charts.

"Hit Me" is the Sounds at their most punk, pairing a spastic riff with Ivarsson's invitation to "Hit me hard!/Hit me right between the eyes/I wanna see the stars," a chorus that easily tops Britney's masochistic appeal.

"It's the last song we wrote," Bengtsson explains, "and we thought we already had enough songs, but the record company kept pushing us, ‘Write more, write more, none of the songs are good enough.' We were really pissed off, so we wrote this song in 10 minutes."

The band's preferred method of crafting their uptempo, über-'80s tunes involves intense collaboration and consolidation of the best parts, chosen in almost anally democratic rounds of ayes and nays.

"It's long and complicated, but the results are good so we'll stick to the formula," says Bengtsson. "From the first rehearsal we did, the chemistry was there. This is the band I wanna play with the rest of my life'."

Pre-Sounds, Bengtsson toiled away less successfully in hardcore bands, while Ivarsson played with a "total punk" act after a brief flirtation with the French horn.

"The only reason she wanted to play French horn was to learn the intro of Dallas, and once she learned it, she quit playing and picked up the guitar instead."

Ironically, the fetish of American TV is central to the Sounds' song "Living in America." But the lyrics, "We're not living in America/We're not sorry for you" has drawn some suspicion down south, putting Bengtsson in a defensive frame of mind.

"The song is three years old, it's not about 9/11 at all," he insists, without prompting. "Sweden is one of the most Americanized countries in the world. Everyone in Sweden watches American series and thinks they're Snoop Doggy Dogg."

Besides tepid TV and wannabe rappers, the Limp Bizkit contingent is a great source of disgust for the Sounds, but has also provided a common enemy for Swedish bands to react against. So, somehow, we may have Fred Durst to thank for the Swede wave, but Bengtsson won't hear one positive word about "pizza rock bands," meaning, "One fat guy, one rapper, one guy scratching and one guy in sweat pants. I don't know anyone who listens to them, but they are huge anyway. Who buys these albums?"

With the Raveonettes and Vue at
Café Campus on Saturday, May 31, 9pm, $12.50

>> Music Listings