How are you and where are you?

Joe: We're great thanks, back at home in Nottingham relaxing after a gig in Manchester for In The City last night.



What have you been up to since you played at Radio 1's Big Weekend?

Rowan: Lots of things. More festival appearances, recording, gigging, the Kerrang '09 CD which we were on, Challenge Swound! and Yo Gabba Gabba, which we'll talk about in a bit.



Lloyd: We're just preparing to release a new single on 2 November. It's called Predator 3.



Joe: We're really proud of the video for it, which we shot entirely ourselves.



Did anything exciting come from the R1BW show? Did it open any new doors for you?

Rowan: Yeah, people were talking about that for quite a while.



Tom: Radio 1 have always been very good to us, particularly Huw Stephens, Rob Da Bank and Steve Lamacq and that seems to have continued. Things have been building nicely since as you can probably see.



Joe: It's a great feather to have in your cap. The dismissive looks people give you when you tell them you're in a band disappear instantly when you mention achievements like the Big Weekend.



You're a lot of fun to watch live. Do you have any tips for aspiring bands in terms of putting on a good show?

Tom: Don't take yourself too seriously and just do what comes naturally. Above all, enjoy yourself. That's the whole point of being in a band.



As a band, you're pretty ruthless self-promoters. You've come up with some great creative ideas to market yourselves - world record attempts, TV appearances, giving away freebies with your singles - what's worked and what hasn't?

Lloyd: Everything we've ever done seems to have helped the band progress.



Joe: It's really hard to break through at the moment. The music industry is in turmoil and there's not much money being thrown around. Couple that with the fact that there are more bands around than ever and you realise you have to do something a bit different to stand out. It's all changed so much and will continue to do so - the internet allows you to push yourself in ways that haven't always been possible. We're just figuring out ways to take advantage of this.



Tom: Also, some of the things we've done are just stuff we'd have done anyway - the zombie world record thing, the TV shows. Lots of it is because we're music obsessives. We just think about the kind of things we love when we're getting into a new band or when we're buying CDs and think about how cool it would be to do similar things.



Tell us more about your latest venture, 'Challenge Swound!'

Joe: We released a mini-album last year and sold out of our initial run of copies pretty quickly so decided to give it away for free. Rather than just letting people download the album we thought it'd be cool to get people to challenge us to do different things. Amongst others we've driven to Loch Ness to find the monster, tried to drink a blended Big Mac meal and even ran a half marathon before playing a gig at the finish line.



Rowan: Deep down we're just massive idiots and enjoy making fools of ourselves, so this gives us a great avenue to do that. It provides us with an avenue to do some cool things, rather than sit around being bored. It's been going really well though and we have around a thousand challenges to complete so far. So if you are going to submit one, make sure it's inventive!



Is there anything off limits that you wouldn't do to promote your music?

Joe: We have to draw the line at a lot of the challenges we get - I'll leave it to your imagination exactly what kind of things. There are certain paths we won't go down.



Tom: We like to do things on our own terms too. Things like appearing on reality TV contests, getting people to write music for you, I know bands that have been through those and it just ends up destroying what the band was about.



You landed a nice bit of TV sync recently, getting a track on Yo Gabba Gabba. How did that come around?

Rowan: One of the creators of the show, Christian Jacobs, plays in a band called The Aquabats, who we've been lucky enough to play with in the past. He became a big fan of ours and has been following our progress ever since. We've been talking with him for a while about doing some music for the show and we finally pinned something down this year. Yo Gabba Gabba is getting so huge now that we feel even more privileged to be involved. The next few seasons have some of the biggest bands in the world featuring on it, not that I'm allowed to mention who they are!



What's all this about product sponsorship - we heard something about hot sauce!

Lloyd: Yeah! When we first started getting some exposure, we began talking about how bands get stuff for free and that we should try. So we did. It probably says a lot about us as people that the first things we went for were the world's hottest sauce, a botanically brewed soft drink and a watch that only rewards you with the time when you've deciphered a series of flashing lights. We never even considered musical equipment! Maybe we should.



Do you worry about getting labelled 'sell-outs'?

Rowan: I've always understood the word 'sell-out' to be when you compromise your integrity to sell some records and make some money. We don't earn money from the band and we all still have day jobs. On top of that we've never purposely changed anything that we do. When we first started we did lots of weird and wonderful things to get our music heard. It's just now we have a better platform to do similar things. At the end of the day, if we didn't feel comfortable doing something and didn't enjoy it, we just wouldn't do it.



Lloyd: To be honest, people who use the word 'sellout' generally have no idea what they are talking about anyway. These are usually the same misguided individuals that start hating a band just because they become popular.



Joe: I don't worry about that, because if it were to happen we'd presumably be making some money from the band and I can't see anything cooler than being paid to do something you love.



What's next for Swound!?

Joe: We're releasing our brand new single, Predator 3, on 2 November plus playing The Fly Bar the same day as a single launch party. Then we head back to Nottingham to play Rock City on the 3rd for a home-town single launch. Of course, like we said there's going to be the track for Yo Gabba Gabba in the near future and in December, as an early Christmas present, we'll be supporting legends A at Rock City!



Watch more videos of Swound! live at Radio 1's Big Weekend or listen to the band at MySpace.com/swound