by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"Wolf Parade is like a retarded dog with four heads," says the band's frontman, Dan, explaining their lack of CD-packaging skills. "At any given time, three of the heads are sleeping."

Okay, so the sleeve of their year-old indie EP degenerated from screen-printed cloth to Ziplock bags, but the real story here is that the CD kept selling out in local record stores, just as Dan (vox, guitar), Spencer (keys), Hadji (laptop, synths) and Arlen (drums) were whipping up respect with their white-hot live sets.

That EP's raw recordings can be heard on www.newmusiccanada.com, but Wolf Parade is issuing a brand new, six-song indie disc to coincide with their Modest Mouse tour and preview their debut LP, to be produced by Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock in Chicago this fall and released by Sub Pop next winter. The Mirror spoke to Dan about Victoria's rebel bands and "totalosity."

Mirror: Hard questions first: describe your sound.

Dan: Oh. Ostensibly, we're just making folk music without any of the musical connotations of folk music. We have keyboards in the band because we didn't have money to buy anything else when we started - I didn't even have a guitar - so I think a lot of the sound comes from working with the limitations of our equipment. If we're close to anything, I'd say it'd be bands like Frog Eyes.

M: That makes sense 'cause you guys have all lived in Victoria, right?

D: Yeah, and Spencer actually played on Frog Eyes' first album. A lot of the Victoria bands that started around 2000 were reacting against the insular hardcore scene out there. The bands at all-ages shows were all carbon copies of each other, so people honestly pushed themselves to do something different. Now, Frog Eyes and Black Mountain are two of the best bands in Canada - no tight pants, no bowl cuts, no mediocre bullshit college rock.

M: I understand that your old band, Atlas Strategic, was about to get signed to Sub Pop before you moved here in 2002.

D: Yeah, then someone in my family passed away suddenly and I lost it. The band kinda collapsed under our own ineptitude and I didn't call [the label] for a year and a half. Then they actually came to Montreal to watch [Wolf Parade] play at Spencer's loft on St-Laurent. It was a relief that they weren't pissed at me.

M: That's gracious of them. Now how about this new EP - what's the title?

D: It's untitled again, like the first one. We were gonna call it Totalosity, because it's a term that totally applies to the band. We always try to be gentle and delicate with the songwriting arrangements, we have these grand ideas for intricately structured songs, and then we go to the practice spot to play them and inevitably the songs get louder and louder and louder until they achieve what I like to call totalosity. Usually near the end of the song, it's at maximum volume. It's like an ape in a dinner jacket trying to sit down to a fancy dinner and use the salad fork correctly. Things go okay for a while, but eventually he's just peeing on the table.

With Modest Mouse at the Rialto on Friday, Aug. 6, 8 p.m., $17.50

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