When was the last time you went to see a band play for the first time and knew you were witnessing something special? Le Loup is barely out of the gate yet, but they're making major waves and for good reason. The seven piece band is producing something so infectious, so engaging, and so very of-the-moment, it's not hard to see why Hardly Art, a label started by some folks from the revered Sub Pop, sent a scout out to their second show and has since signed them.

Four guitars, a big swell of layered instrumentation, and breathy dual male/female vocals -- all energy, Le Loup make an impression from the moment they take the stage. They have a sound that fills the room, building momentum and delivering the waves that build and pound and retreat, keeping the audience engaged every moment of their set. From uneasy and chaotic noise, they deliver each song in joyful bursts. Every member of the band is completely present during their performances; if at any moment someone's not playing an instrument, they'll dance around the stage or clap or sing back up.

There's a lot a band made up of 7 core members can do, and Le Loup's figured out a way to do most of it. From french horns and tambourines, to banjos, keys, a bevy of drums and more, the gusto they take the stage with never dies down. There was a marked improvement between the first and second time I saw the band play (their second and fourth shows, respectively), so by the time you catch them they're likely to be even tighter. The only fault I found in their show was that lead female vocalist May Tabol isn't as strong on the big rock wailers as she is on the lighter dual harmonies. Her pretty, melodic warble got lost when she went for volume. But it was a flaw that was hard to focus on -- the deft drumming and instrumentation throughout the entire band, and the raging amounts of energy and harmony that came off that stage made it seem insignificant. They're masters of the dramatic build -- deftly dropping and adding instruments to keep tension in each track. In short, Le Loup has made some serious fans out of the folks of DCist.

It's also worth noting that the sound at the Black Cat was absolutely perfect when we saw Le Loup play there. Each instrument was miced perfectly -- and with seven people, that's no easy feat to pull off.

Keep your your dials set to DCist for an exciting announcement about where to see the band next.

Visit them online at: leloupmusic.net

Questions for Le Loup:

Give me a brief history of Le Loup – where are you all from, how'd you meet, how long have you been in the area, that kind of thing.

Sam grew up in Portland, Oregon, moved out to Ohio for school and then pushed further eastward to DC after graduating with a poli pci degree. He was in the area for about three months before pulling the band together. We all met over craigslist - Sam had met May about two weeks before in response to an ad she had sent out looking for bandmates herself; subsequent to that, some favorable responses to songs he'd posted on myspace convinced me that he needed to try out the music live, so he sent out a message looking for bandmates for this project, and five or six people showed up at his apartment for the informal "audition" (talking to them, making sure they weren't crazy). Nicole, May, Mike and Jim were part of that original group, and they obviously stuck. After about two or three months of practices without a steady rhythm section, Jim sent out another Craigslist posting. Dan and Robby, friends since middle school and veterans of the DC music scene, responded almost immediately by blowing us away with a more formal audition, and then sending Jim a stunning e-mail treatise on why they were perfect for the band and why we needed to keep them on board. It was fantastic. Sam's friend Christian Ervin, who lives in Boston, joined us for the most recent live show, and we hope to eventually make him a permanent fixture in the band.

When did you pull the band together? What were your motivations? Did you have a sound in mind or did it come about organically?

A while back Sam had seen some fantastic shows roll through town and posted a few of his songs on myspace on a whim. The music he saw gave him the overwhelming urge to share his stuff with other musicians. So, he put a few of the tracks up online and started obsessively friend-requesting his favorite bands. A couple weeks later he got a response from one of said bands, saying they loved the stuff, and they were forwarding it to a friend of theirs at their label. The same day, Sam received a message from the label-friend, asking him to send him more songs. He got really excited, decided to try and pull together a band, see if it could be done live. The whole process was streaked with a very careful skepticism. Originally, Sam didn't even think he wanted to share the songs with anybody. Later, he didn't think they'd be possible live, since each track utilizes up to 30 voices (including vocals and instruments). Even later, we all tried to keep a cool head about the chances of being signed. It was all very cautious.

At first we had a sound in mind, but it took on a life of it's own when we all got together with our different musical backgrounds, styles, and ideas. We love that big, overwhelming wall-of-sound type thing. The idea of having songs in which a large number of instruments are playing very clearly defined, pattern-oriented lines was also a big draw- when put together, it can give a very baroque feel to things.

I can't help but draw comparisons between your band and a few other popular Canadian bands of the moment – large crews, layered male/female vocals, lots of instruments and instrument switching, big orchestral sound – I'm talking about Stars, New Pornographers and especially, the Arcade Fire. Are you guys fans of their music? Would you call them an inspiration for you? Did you have any intentions of sounding like them?

Funny you should mention new pornographers and stars. Two of the main influences for the album were destroyer (offshoot of new pornographers) and broken social scene (originators of stars). Also heavily influenced by animal collective, Brian Wilson and Wilco. Strangely enough, the Arcade Fire, although a favorite band, wasn't really in mind when the stuff was being made. Sam hadn't listened to them for a while, and was focusing more on the aforementioned bands. We've been compared to the Arcade Fire a few times, and I can definitely see it, but I pretty oddly, I never would have predicted it before now.

As for the live sound, it wasn't a conscious choice to begin with. There was one song that happened to call for a horn texture - Nicole was the only one who played and owned a brass instrument at the time, and it happened to be the french horn. There was one song that was very personal to Sam, that he had composed on the piano, and his voice in combination with the controlled crescendos of "Sea took me" just worked really well. Nicole didn't really have much to do - since her role at the time was keyboardist - so she was planning to clap and dance around the stage. Until one practice we tried incorporating the horn and it fit quite well. W e bear some similarity in that we're a bunch of people playing a bunch of different sounds, the end result being a great live show. The shows are intrinsically tied to the album however, and hopefully with its release, that added dimension will soften whatever surface characteristics we share with other bands. The album represents a unique venture, and as an extension, our live shows do as well.

That being said, a number of people in the band are huge fans of all three of the bands mentioned and love being compared to them, but think our similarities with those bands are more in style rather than sound.

And, when you named the band Le Loup, was that a nod to that Canadian sound? Where'd the name come from?

Actually it's a nod to the French. We hate Canadians. "le loup" was completely arbitrary, actually. Sam was in a previous band who was searching for a name and "le loup" was one of the rejects. It was probably a joke- something along the lines of "look how many bands right now use the word 'wolf' in their name- how can we capitalize upon that? Now how can we make it sound even more pretentiously indie? Say it in French!" (Disclaimer: Only Dan speaks French). Anyways, Sam actually loved the name- not for its satirical or pretentious connotations, but just for the sound, nice and compact, musical sounding - so he jacked it when the old band discarded it, and just started calling this project "le loup.".

Given that you've only got five shows under your belt at this point, and a pretty full roster of recordings songs to play, it seems like you must have written most of the music long before you ever thought about putting together a live lineup. Is that right?

Correct. Most of the songs were written before we ever started playing, or even knew about each other. May and Sam had both been making stuff. There are a few songs that we haven't even learned yet, and new ones are always being made. The set will probably be fantastically different in a few months' time, once we've expanded our repertoire.

You have had a pretty full collection of recordings online – where'd you record it? Did you go to a studio, do it yourselves?

The songs were recorded on Sam's laptop, in his bedroom. After the band had been together a while, we went to FARC Studios in Arlington and re-recorded a couple tracks but ultimately decided that we should focus on recording entirely new stuff as a band. Subsequent albums will be recorded in studio with everybody present.

Do you have any recordings pressed already?

The album is loosely slated to be pressed and released in early fall.

So you guys were signed to Sub Pop's Hardly Art label. How'd you pull that off being such a young, new band?

We've just been signed to Hardly Art. It's in the same neighborhood (literally) as sub pop, and founded and run by a few of the same people, but I believe that's where the official affiliation ends. Again, got snapped up through myspace. Which is astounding, when you think of it. I always saw myspace as something of the musician's personal ego-polisher (for us, included), not a tool that was actually utilized by labels to search for talent. Wonders never cease.

Have you been writing new stuff lately?

Yes, there's plenty of new stuff in the works. Might be a while before you see it, but it'll be gradually introduced to the live set.

How do you guys go about writing songs? Is there one main writer, a collaboration, people generally write the parts for their own instruments…?

Sam wrote the originals, but the creative process goes much further than that. Accepting that the live show necessarily can't sound anything like the recorded stuff (again, don't have a hundred musicians at our disposal), we use the originals as a basic blueprint- how generally we want the song to sound. Then we build the foundation together, rip that foundation apart, build it again, rip it apart again, burn the blueprints and knock together the house on gut instinct and rock geometry. Too much metaphor? Point is, the original songs are used as very basic idea, and then everybody in the band uses their individual creative bent to capitalize upon that idea. That's why the live show sounds so much different from the recorded entity. It's still the same basic song, with the same broad dynamic layout, but the specifics are, most of the time, incredibly different.

How do you feel about the local music scene?

DC doesn't have the same kind of draw as other cities in on the east coast, and often gets overlooked by a number of tours. Despite the vibrant scene (Black Cat, IOTA, Rock & Roll Hotel, IOTA, Velvet Lounge, 9:30) musicians can struggle to break in DC. Because of this, the bands that are around play because they love it. They're not playing to get signed, or to be seen, they're playing cause they love playing. Our experience has been that DC is a town with a blossoming artistic community, ripe with incredible bands that are overwhelmingly supportive of each other. New York and LA tend to be saturated with artists that move there looking for a break; the result can be a rather cut throat environment, where musicians don't cooperate as much. Not so in DC. It's fun to be part of that artistic backbone.

Given that you're so new to it, what has your experience breaking in, making connections, playing gigs been?

Dan and Robby (locals) have played around the DC scene for years and have friends all over the place. Max Glass, who books in the area, made himself available as a huge springboard for us, for which we're eternally grateful. He booked us our first show at the Velvet Lounge and continues to consult us on being a band in DC. In general, the guys who run the venues we've played at- velvet lounge, DC9, IOTA, black cat- have been very receptive and helpful, especially Rob at the Velvet Lounge; he's been a really good friend of ours. Beyond that, the bands themselves have been more than happy to join forces. Everybody in the area is just into the scene 100 percent.

You put on a very dynamic live show with a lot of energy – is that something that's important to you and you strive for, or is it a result of some other factors?

We made a concerted effort to ramp up the energy in the live show, and still continue to try to push ourselves. We had all seen a number of live performances where the band- many times a band we idolize- plays the set exactly as it sounds on the CD, and that's their main focus- perfectly reproducing the album onstage. While this may be impressive on a technical level, it's not what live performance is about to us.

A live musical performance, just like any stage performance, is theater. You're presenting a persona to the audience- and as a rock persona, it should be completely over-the-top and overwhelming. The music is important- it's the script, but the script is nothing without good execution. It's our duty to present the music in new and interesting ways to the audience. A good guideline is: watch a video of your performance with the sound off. If it's not still just as entertaining to watch, then you've got to work on your live show.

With this in mind, we LOVE playing this music and have trouble containing ourselves when we play it. When we practice we jump and dance just like we do on stage.

Do you guys practice often? Where does that happen?

We practice in Robby's parent's basement, god bless their souls. They somehow seem to enjoy a good house rumbling two to three times a week, more before shows.

Who are some of your favorite local bands?

We love love love Jukebox the Ghost. Ditto exit clov. Middle distance runner, Let's French, Deleted Scenes, These United States, The Bang, Le Jeune, Tallest Highest.

Are there any bands you particularly enjoy playing with (so far)?

Our last show at the black cat with Jukebox the Ghost and Exit Clov was a blast! It was also a special show at IOTA with The Bang, and they were nice enough to do it on such short notice. We had a blast on both!

What's your favorite venue in the area to play?

Black cat was a rush - they are such pros there. The velvet lounge will always be our birth place - it was our first show, rob the sound guy is fantastic, and all our friends were there. Also, we are VERY excited to be playing the Rock & Roll Hotel May 22nd with the Rosebuds! Jim already had tickets to the show and a week later we got the email asking if we wanted to open for them! Now he has to sell them – anyone looking for one?

Do you have plans to tour outside of the area?

We're gearing up for a tour around the fall. Besides that, we're planning some weekend shows in other cities- Baltimore, Philly, NY, NJ, the like.

What are your favorite bands in general? Who are you fans of?

Sam: Wilco, Destroyer, New Pornographers, Wolf Parade, Broken Social Scene, Brian Wilson, My Morning Jacket, Arthur & Yu, Of Montreal, The Books, Sufjan Stevens.

Jim: Wilco, The Arcade Fire, The Shins, Ryan Adams, and the Allman Brothers, My Morning Jacket.

May: Wolf Parade, Mirah, Regina Spektor

Nicole: John Legend, Sergio Mendes, The Cure, David Bowie, Lily Allen, Camera Obscura, The Blow, Of Montreal.

Mike: Wolf Parade, Thermals, Ambulance Ltd.

Dan: D'Angelo, Squarepusher, The Postal Service, Stevie Wonder, Mos Def, The Shins.

Robby: Radiohead, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Green Day, Sizzla, Beatles, Miles Davis, Elvin Jones.

Do you have an all-time favorite DC-area band?

Fugazi and Q and not U. Dan thinks Marvin Gaye should be getting props here, as well as Duke Ellington, but they don't really fit under the "band" label.

When you close your eyes and think about where Le Loup will be in a year, what do you see?

Do we have to close our eyes? Because when we close our eyes we get sleepy and start dreaming, and then chances are we'll see le loup on a boat made of marshmallows, with chocolate instruments, chocolate stages and chocolate music with ice cream, sailing from planet to planet. With eyes open, we hope to see le loup touring the country, living in poverty, and loving every minute of it.

Photos from the band's website by Lisa Cortright