“We started off as just friends doing crimes and we started playing music together and that’s the short story.”

Want the long story? Collectively they wield enough facial hair to make a 70’s porn star jealous and when they play live “you can smell the testosterone in the music”.

Chief are the four piece from Santa Monica who have already won the BBC 6 Music’s Rebel Playlist and the support of Radio One (they’ve even had the pleasure of playing on a roof top with Zane Lowe: “It was delightful”.)

Now for a while there has been a question gnawing at me, and I figured these testosterone fuelled studs may be the ones that hold the answer, so here goes: do you think there’s any truth to the rumour that a musician’s playing face is the same as his sex face?

“In my case, I hope not!” (“Michael keeps his eyes closed the whole time.” Evan chips in.) “But I’ve never had the opportunity to watch a recording of myself having sex so you’d have to ask the myriad girls I’ve had the pleasure of spending the night with.”

Myriad, eh? That must be a whole lot of groupies.

“There are few groupies, but they are worth their weight in gold.”

Despite quoting fellow California boys The Beach Boys as one of their wide range of influences, their sound couldn’t be further from sun soaked, surf pop. Instead, Chief make the kind of rawk that is best listened to when chewin’ tobacco in Marlboro Country and spittin’ into a bucket. Yee haw. All guitars and vocal harmonies, at their best they have the kind of sound that is bound to induce a sentimental yearning for another time; at their worst, they trade in the sounds of the 70s, without bringing anything new to the table. Still, this isn’t the worst news. Sure, it may not be groundbreaking, but, y’know, it’s fine…. Besides, this isn’t stopping them from already gathering their fair share of hardcore fans; not bad, given they rose out of relative obscurity to make their appearance on Domino records somewhat out of the blue and have seen their debut album ’Modern Rituals’ released only in August. Meanwhile, they’re keeping their cool. “All I’m really concerned with is making the ‘right now’ as good as it can possibly be. I hope that there is pots of gold and lovely women in my future, but only time will tell.”

And if you want to know more: “Meet me for a bootle of Rose and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

Is that a promise?

Photograph by Bartolomy.