On first listen, Dance for the Dying sounds like the wrong name for such an upbeat group. Yes, their song “El Monstro” employs a healthy share of monster movie imagery, and “Death in the Garden” is about singer M.C. Wolfe’s “morbid fascination” with a decomposing rat in her flower bed. But those unsettling images, when juxtaposed with soaring synths and twinkling xylophones, don’t exactly project the mopiness that the name suggests.

However, upon learning that the name originates from a lively performance that drummer Chris Link saw in India of children celebrating their elders, the name makes more sense. The guitar riffs are upbeat and party-ready and Wolfe’s powerful voice and commanding stage presence will capture your attention as swiftly and surely as the Wilson sisters of Heart did three decades ago. They may play to half-full club-sized rooms currently, but I’d be very surprised if big things don’t happen for this band.

We talked to Link, Wolfe and guitarist Joshua Hunter on their songwriting process and why at least some of them are hesitant to play the Rock Band versions of their songs.

Find Them Online: http://www.danceforthedying.com

Buy Their Music: http://danceforthedying.bandcamp.com

See Them Next: Tonight at the Velvet Lounge. Doors open at 9:00 p.m.

Chris, it sounds like you came up with the band name when you were in India. How long were you in India?

Chris: I went twice actually. The first time was for 21 days. It was sort of a silent retreat sort of thing; an introspective kind of spiritual journey.

How long were you there the second time around?

Chris: I went back for a couple of weeks the second time just to go through it a little bit deeper.

If you don’t mind my asking, what prompted that?

Chris: I don’t mind you asking. There are a couple of things, actually. I lifetime of things, really. But, the turning point was that a good friend of mine decided to go there kind of on a whim and he had basically been telling me when he came back for about a year that he knew that it was something that I was kind of destined to do and I didn’t really pay that much attention to him. Surprisingly enough, and this is almost embarrassing to say but global warming — I was freaking out at the time about global warming — and I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I wanted to help humanity somehow or something so at the end of my panicky rope of laying in bed and pulling the covers over my head for two weeks, I was like, “I should do something. Maybe I should do this thing in India.” So, that’s the actual catalyst that got me there.

The interesting thing was that before I left for India, nobody was talking about global warming, really. It was kind of on the back burner. And I was freaking out and I called my family and said, “Mom, Dad, this is what’s going on.” They’d say, “Don’t worry about it.” Then, when I got back everybody was talking about it and there was this big movement toward green energy and all this stuff. So, it was really neat. As I shifted in India and came back and society shifted, too.

How long ago was this?

Chris: I guess it was about seven years ago.

How long between coming back from India and starting up the band?

Chris: A few years, because Josh and I started playing together in 2009. So, it was a little while. It was actually the second trip to India that really prompted the band name if I remember correctly and that was a couple years after I went the first time. So, it was about two years before it finally got off the ground. It took me awhile to start playing drums again. I quit playing drums right before I went to India. While I was in India, I discovered that playing drums was kind of a gift that was given to me and that I needed to continue to play. So, I looked around for awhile to try to join in other bands and didn’t find anybody that I really wanted to play with. So, that’s when I started this one.

How did you all meet?

Chris: Through the Internet. Through Craigslist. I put out an ad looking for musicians and that’s how Josh and I met. We started kind of jamming around together. Then, Josh’s girlfriend worked with this girl named M.C. that Josh was really intrigued with. We decided to contact her and see if she would hang out with us and see if the music clicked and fortunately, it did.

Josh: When I moved up to the area and my girlfriend was at work, I was looking to get into making music again. I wanted to get into a group with a girl singer. She was like, “Well, there’s a girl that I work with that you should meet and swap stuff with.” I was going to give her a CD of things that I’d been working on and I don’t think I ever got around to it, but I was actively jamming with Chris and then it came up again a couple of months later. She was like, “If you’re doing this thing with the drummer guy, you should actually give her some of your stuff.” So, we didn’t even give her anything. She just came by.

You just came over and practiced with them once?

M.C.: It wasn’t even that. They invited me over and I thought they would send me this material and have me come up with some lyrics or that they’d make cover songs or something like that. I thought they were going to send me something that I would hear ahead of time. But they didn’t send me anything, so I was a little bit anxious coming over to what I thought was an audition with them. But they played and I hummed along a little bit and in the end it felt like they had been auditioning for me. They were like, “If you like us then we like you.” It was kind of funny and awkward.

Chris: It was kind of organic, too, I think because Josh and I were still forming songs. We had a few things that we liked but as far as the direction of the band we were pretty open-minded. We had been working with a couple of different people and people were coming and going. There was nothing that really stuck. So, just, personality-wise, Josh and I just having been in bands before that had played out a lot and traveled a little bit, we were looking for someone that we could get along with. I think the chemistry was more important to us than anything else. Obviously, she had to have talent but the chemistry was pretty immediate. Once we heard her kind of rambling over what we were jamming on, just her vocals, we’d look at each other and go, “Wow, did you hear that?” We were both just enamored with what she could do with her voice before we ever did anything formal. I think we just kind of knew.

You knew you wanted to play out. How much playing out have you been able to do?

Josh: Quite a bit, once we nailed down Brad. The addition of Brad kind of streamlined the process and he was really interested in playing out and getting out there.

M.C.: We were working with another bassist for awhile and it just really didn’t work out. So, the three of us had been playing together for almost a year before Brad joined the band and we had only played out one show before he joined. Since he joined, we’ve played anywhere between two and five shows a month.

Chris: That’s over the past twelve or thirteen months.

Where is the venue you’re playing in the videos listed on your website?

M.C.: That’s in Fairfax.

Chris: It’s Fat Tuesday’s in Fairfax.

I had no idea what the hell that was. Thanks.

Josh: It’s right across from the Patriot Center at George Mason.

Chris: We still play there and we’ll be playing there in January. They treat us very well. It’s sometimes nice to play outside of D.C. to a different type of crowd.

Well, the people that took those videos and took your promotional photos look like they’re professionals. How did you get hooked up with these folks?

Josh: We’re lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are proficient at what they do and we’re also savvy enough to squeeze them and milk them for everything.

Chris: That’s so horrible.

Josh: You reach out to people who are good at what they do and I think we’ve been lucky to be around people who are good at those sorts of things.

M.C.: We’re surrounded by talented friends and we’ve also had some really good fortune. So, not only photography and videography, but we were also put in the Rock Band video game because somebody saw us at a show and formed a little bit of a liking for us and started coming to lots of our shows and then they programmed us into the game. So, we’ve been really, really lucky with friends and the people that we’ve attracted.

Which song is in Rock Band?

Chris: All of them.

Josh: All five of the songs are going to be.

M.C.: They aren’t all currently available. “Echo” is available and “El Monstro” is available.

Josh: It started with just “Echo” but people received it really, really well and so the guy that did “Echo” for us asked us to do another one. So, “El Monstro” went on there. Then he said, “Well, everyone’s asking for it, so screw it, let’s just put the whole EP on there.

M.C.: And he has been to our live shows and they’re already waiting for our next set of recordings.

Congratulations!

Josh: Thanks. It’s really neat. It’s really cool to be able to see the avatar of your band or of yourself playing your own music in digital form. It’s unreal.

Chris: Especially if you’re astronomically fucking terrible at these video games like I am. I can’t play Guitar Hero or Rock Band worth a shit. So, it’s sweet that people can rock out and do a much better job than I could.

M.C.: It was really funny, but of my friends has a younger sister that’s in high school and she goes to the high school that I went to, where I was not a particularly popular student. She was riding the bus home from school one day and listening to “Echo” on her iPod and a couple of the girls on her bus were like, “Oh, I know that song. It’s on Rock Band.” She was all excited and said, “Well, I know the band, socially!” It’s cool what these weird, awesome things have done for us.

Josh: We should probably also clarify and mention that it’s available for Rock Band on the Rock Band Network, which is the online database for Rock Band for the Xbox 360. I’m just saying, it’s not like you can go out and buy Rock Band in the store and we’re immediately on it. You have to purchase it. I’m sure people know that, but I just wanted to clarify.

Have you guys played your songs on Rock Band?

M.C.: Yeah. It’s funny because on facebook you can see where your fans are coming from and it’s like, a high school student in somewhere in rural Washington State purchased our song and then all their classmates did. So, it’s an interesting little phenomenon. We’ve also got people following in Canada. So yeah, we’ve gotten a following on Rock Band.

Chris: Wait, were you asking if we’d played it ourselves?

Yes.

Chris: No, and I’ve been dying to, due on the comment about me being really shitty at those games.

Josh: I would not like to try because I think I’d suck at it.

M.C.: I would love to try but I don’t have the most current version. I am kind of hoping that we find somebody’s house or party or something where we can play it.

Chris: I’m dying to play it. When you look at the drum parts, the way it was authored, and I hope Andy knows how good a job he did, every drum hit is on exactly the way it should be. So, I’m dying to play it because I’m hoping I can just sit down and play it the way I would play it and have it be right. I’ve never had that experience when I’ve played the game before. So, I’m hoping that it’ll be that.

Josh: Somebody told me that if you suck at these games, if you do it on Expert, you’ll do a better job. So, I’m hoping I can do it like that.

When did you initially record these songs for the EP?

Chris: February of this year.

Wow. Things have been happening quickly for you.

M.C.: We didn’t release anything until late June and our release party was in July. So a lot of those things have been happening since that release date.

Chris: So, that’s even shorter.

Who writes the songs?

M.C.: We write collaboratively. Usually what happens is that someone will have a little riff that they come up with or some little bit of a melody and they bring it in. Everybody else gets to write their own parts, but depending on how strongly one person feels about it, they might ask somebody to modify a little bit about what they’re doing. But for the most part, everything is written as a true collaboration.

Josh: We somehow get off on banging our heads together. Any conflict will bring out the best, songwriting-wise. So, for instance, “Thug Love,” which you can hear on the EP was basically just a tiny riff that Brad had and it took the rest of us to flesh the rest of that song out. Whereas something like “Death in the Garden” was something that I came up with and the rest of us jumped on it and fleshed it out. We have probably about twelve other things floating around in the ether that we might work on and we might not but it takes the one thing for us to hit on all at the same time and be vibing on and have it all work for us to move forward with it.

Chris: I think a good example of that is tonight, we had a good thing in rehearsal that we were working on. Very new. It just came out of nowhere at a rehearsal. And we’d been working on it a little bit, trying to get it ready, because we’re going back into the studio in February. We’re going to do another five song EP with Justin Long, who was the producer of our last EP. We had a really great time doing that with him. He’s a really great part of the process. Anyway, tonight we were trying to work on one particular song and we ended up writing a brand new song. So, like Josh said, there are many songs that we have pieces of, that we just kind of pull out occasionally and work on.

Part of the reason for my intrigue is that you’ve got some interesting lyrical content.

Chris: Well, that’s all M.C.

Josh: Thank God for that. The rest of us don’t focus any attention on that as far as writing. The three of us, Chris, Brad and myself focus on our instrument and we don’t have any input whatsoever on the lyrics.

M.C.: It’s kind of funny because they don’t always even know what I’m saying until it’s recorded.

I’m just interested as to how you wrote a song about a decomposing rat.

M.C.: So, true story, I used to live on U Street in D.C. and I had a little tiny garden patch in front of my apartment and the summer before last for some reason there were just tons of rats. I found this dead rat amongst my flowers and my flower bed and it was completely flat, as the song says. There was no flesh or anything inside of it. It was just this rat skeleton with pieces of felt on it. Yeah, I don’t know how it got there. So, I didn’t do anything with it right away and then I noticed that my housemate had been hanging out in the garden patch and I was like, “Hey, did you notice that rat out there?” and he was like, “Yeah, it’s pretty gross.” I was like, “Yeah, it is.” So I figured that he threw it away and I went out and it was still there. So, it became this fascination of mine. I would kind of check on it everyday. I guess I would just talk about it.

Chris: She would come over and report on it. I’d be like, “M.C., how’s the rat?” and she’d say, “Well, the flesh is almost gone around its ears but the one ear is holding on.”

M.C.: The guys were kind of jamming on this new thing that they’d come up with and Chris shouted out to me that I should sing about the rat. So, I just kind of nonsensically started singing my little story and that became the song. I ended up keeping the lyrics about the dead rat in the garden.

Josh: If I’m not mistaken, this was the first song that we wrote with Brad in the group.

M.C.: So, that was it. I kept reporting about this rat that used to be in front of my house and they laughingly said, “Hey, why don’t you sing about that?” and I sang over this song that they were working on and it stayed.

What separate influences are you bringing together for this particular group?

Chris: I’ve always been a rock drummer, overall. I’ve played a lot of different styles. I was in a lot of hip-hop bands for awhile, so I can handle a lot when it comes to drumming. But for some reason, we ended up going in a really dance-y vibe with a lot of what we were doing because that’s what M.C. wanted to do, which was great. For some reason, the dance vibe kind of stuck. We liked that upbeat nature. But we all have those dark overtones. Josh has The Cure logo tattooed on his left forearm. So, there’s always that kind of vibe coming from him whether he knows it or not.

Josh: I’m also wearing a Joy Division shirt. Brad and I also come from the darker, hipper stuff of the late ‘80s and the early and mid-‘90s and the alternative aspects of that era. I think we try to be energetic. I think we try to get people to move and be engaged. I can’t say from M.C.’s perspective but without her and her vocal melodies and her actual lyrics, what we would be doing would be pretty, I don’t want to say run-of-the-mill…but it wouldn’t have been as unique.

Chris: The idea for me of the band name, Dance for the Dying, is that we’re all dying whether we know it or not. So, let’s all get together through music and through live shows and have a great time together. That’s the whole idea for me, so anything that encompasses that musically, I’m open to anything, even if we get off the path of the dance thing that we’re currently doing and go down another road. It’s still some form of entertainment for the people and for ourselves. As long as it fits that criteria, it’s always good to me. But, I definitely enjoyed what we’ve done so far.

What’s next for Dance for the Dying?

M.C.: We were selected to be one of eleven bands from around the country for Paul Frank’s music compilation. So, they debuted it with their new float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. So, we have that little cool collaboration going on right now.

Josh: And as Chris had said before, we’re heading back into the studio in January. Depending on how much we can get done, it’ll either be another EP or more. So, five to seven new songs will be recorded very shortly.

Chris: The only thing that we didn’t mention is that we are going to be shooting a video soon for “Echo.” We’re planning on shooting it in January if everything falls in line the way it should. But everyone likes the song “Echo.” So, we’ll be endeavoring down that road soon as well.

Josh: Also, we have a show at the Rock and Roll Hotel on January 7th and we’re planning on getting a video crew. I’m not sure if it’s going to be used in the “Echo” video or not, but we’re planning on getting a video crew out for that. So, if people want to come out and be in our rock video, they are more than welcome to come and enjoy.