Cute Is What We Aim For Gain Fans, Battle Enemies Online

(andPOP) - Cute Is What We Aim For, a pop-rock quartet of teenage boys from Buffalo, NY, has more fans than U2. If by fans you mean MySpace friends, that is.

Despite the fact that MySpace has made the news recently as the web site of choice for creepy old men in search of some cyber lovin,' the site is still known best as the perfect tool for bands to promote themselves and for fans to discover new music through its online networking system. Sites like MySpace and PureVolume have made it easy for bands to gain worldwide exposure with just a few clicks.

But whether these sites actually have the power to make indie artists stars has been debatable for quite some time. That is, until Cute Is What We Aim For came along.

The band has, in the span of a year and half, formed, got signed to one of rock's hottest labels, and picked up a date to play with Dashboard Confessional, Jack's Mannequin, and Hellogoodbye at California's Bamboozle Left festival this coming October. Where they got discovered? Online.

"It's unbelievable," bassist Fred Cimato told andPOP recently while on tour with Paramore, Hit The Lights, and This Providence.

Cimato said the band saw their fanbase grow exponentially when they performed a set of headlining dates in conjunction with the June release of their debut album, The Same Old Blood Rush With A New Touch.

"The first show was to maybe 50 people – that was before our record came out. Two weeks later, by the end of the tour, we were already playing sold out shows in front of 400 kids every night," he enthused. "So just within then, the difference is huge."

Seeing fans in the audience excited to see them and singing along to songs has been surreal, drummer Tom Falcone added.

Cute Is What We Aim For first turned heads in cyberspace last year when fans caught on to catchy demo tracks they had put up for public listening on MySpace and PureVolume. Mere months later, the band had won a coveted spot on the 2005 Bamboozle bill through PureVolume's online Battle of the Bands competition. Before long, they were sharing a label with Fall Out Boy at Fueled By Ramen.

That they still may be in a bit of shock by how far they've come is possible. It's obvious that the band – or at the very least Cimato and Falcone – is still adjusting to the spotlight. Both looked and acted like the high school kids who make a lot of racket every afternoon in the garage down the street. Unlike the rehearsed, polished answers you might get from a band that has already made its rounds on the media circuit, Cimato and Falcone never really quite knew what to say.

Of course, they're still young. Cimato had just turned 18 in June while Falcone is a recent high school dropout. "I left right in the middle of my tenth year," he said. "Didn't look back and just kept going."

It also probably didn't help that lead singer Shaant Hacikyan was delayed at the Canada-U.S. border with guitarist Jeff Czum, said their publicist, and thus couldn't make it for the interview. Hacikyan, 19, may be the band's more articulate member – he's credited for Cute's clever, snappy lyrics that their official biography compares to "verbal gymnastics" and which Wikipedia describes as heavily reliant on "Shakespeare-esque poetic devices — such as alliteration, assonance, pun and metaphor."

While some lines are toothachingly sweet, witty words like "You check labels more than the FCC/But these calories are killing me" about high school angst has attracted a lot of teenage devotees.

"Our album is mostly about social pressures from high school and growing up," said Cimato. "Kids can definitely relate to our lyrics."

Cute's style is similar to that of the dozens of emo pop-rock bands that have been popping up lately, such as fellow Fueled By Ramen labelmates The Academy Is…, and Panic! At The Disco. So is there enough room for another such act?

"Those bands are definitely great bands but I like to think of us as kinda… away from them a little bit," said Cimato. "Both those bands are definitely way more serious. I like to think of us as more of a fun band."

Indeed, Cute's music show signs of heavier pop influences – in fact, the band describes itself as a power-pop act. But as we all know, the label "pop" doesn't always go over well. Cimato said that touring though, which Cute has been doing steadily since April, has helped them gain respect as artists.

"A lot of bands are like, 'When we found out we were going to go on tour with you, we were kinda weirded out cause we heard so many bad things about you,'" Cimato said. "But, like, when we finally meet these bands, they realize that we're harmless."

But the pop aspect is just one of the targets on the band's back. Already, Cute has dealt with a lot of drama, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that they had hooked up only a very short time ago. There was the beef with AbsolutePunk.net CEO and founder Jason Tate (who has accused Cute of being manufactured and dishonest), and then members of Hacikyan and Czum's former band, Cherrybing, claimed Cute had stolen their music.

"It's easy to hate us, it's easy to talk bad about us," said Cimato. "We haven't really quote-unquote paid our dues so bands love to hate on us for that."

But, said Falcone, "shit happens," and they've been doing their best to ignore any negative backlash. They're choosing instead to focus on riding the wave of their new-found fame, with a full touring schedule ahead of them that includes dates with Hellogoodbye and Dave Mellilo this fall. And of course, Cute Is What We Aim For is giving hope to high school bands everywhere with internet access.

Both Cimato and Falcone believe the musical landscape is changing and that the next big thing may be sending you a friend request on MySpace right now. "The internet's just become so powerful," said Cimato. His band is proof of that.