It doesn’t matter where they say they came from or how they were formed, one thing that will immediately draw listeners to The Roosevelt is their sound. It’s surprising to hear a new band write such polished songs with memorable hooks. Maybe there is something in the water at the building in Northwest that they’re named after. As of right now, the band’s discography consists of a handful of mp3s available on their site. But an EP is on the way, and the guys are ready to spread the word.

Through the magic of e-mail, DCist recently was able to “sit down” with the band, Jon Mosher (vocals), Scott Remley (bass), Sam Mitchell (guitar), and Chris Carney (drums), to discuss the important things in life – like origin stories, the Flaming Lips and ninjas.

You have to explain the bio on your Web site. Did your parents give birth to a rock band? And if so, why does everyone have a different last name?

[Sam]: Actually, we were all born to different fathers. It gets a little complicated, and we just didn’t want to get into all the sordid details of our home life in our bio. Thanks for bringing up painful memories, though. Seriously, it’s cool.

Truthfully — and this may come as a surprise — we made all that stuff up (except the part about making peasants cry back in time — that really happened). That bio started as one of our “blast” e-mails that we send out to our mailing list before every show. We try to make them funny, with mixed results. That one was received well, so we threw it up on the site. Our original bio, which was far more accurate, explained that we ‘re all displaced New Englanders who independently found our way to D.C. over the past couple years. And that’s the God’s honest truth.

More after the jump.