Canadian band, Dragonette has had a big year so far. The electro-pop act has been nominated for a Juno award (a Canadian music award, for those not familiar with music on-goings north of the border), they've scored some serious commercial publicity by recording the theme song to "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" for Target Canada, and are currently on tour with Diplo's DJ project, Major Lazer. While the band has certainly been busy, we were able to score a brief interview with guitarist Dan Kurtz and touch on Dragonette's growing success.
How do you feel the Canadian music scene/community differs from that in the US, and everywhere else in the world? Like many countries, Canada has a national music scene that is really vibrant within its borders yet doesn't necessarily get exported outside if the country. On the other hand, plenty of Canadian bands find their way onto the international scene, which for a country with relatively so few people is pretty unique to Canada. Canada also benefits from being part of regular tour routing of major bands. I'd say that we're lucky in that way. It probably raises the standard of national bands, and keeps our musical minds open.
What do you feel sets you apart from other electro-pop acts? Electro pop describes a lot of the music that we make, but we have always just made any kind of music that we like... we've made country songs, jazz songs, rock and roll songs. All kinds of stuff that falls far outside of electro. To be honest, I'd say we're more accidentally electro than anything.
Bodyparts has been nominated for a Juno under the "Best Dance Recording of the Year" category, how do you guys feel about that? Do you think you'll win? It always feels great to be recognized in our own country for what we do. Winning is pretty great too, but I have no idea whether we will or not.
How do you feel about performing the theme song to "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" for Target Canada? How did that come about? That song is a piece of our childhoods and it was actually super fun to be able to make a re-work of it. We'd never have sat down to do it if not for Target wanting to use that song specifically for their ad, so we're happy they asked us to take a swing at it.
What does the rest of 2013 have in store for you? Touring, touring, writing, touring.
Dragonette plays tonight at House of Blues.
