While soft-rock supergroup Gayngs is most known for its inclusion of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, there is a lot of hotness happening with them that has nothing to do with being in a cabin in the woods. Their track “Cry” (video below the interview) has been my go-to “smoking cigarettes on the balcony in a hoodie, looking pensive” track since I first heard it in September and the rest of the album is just as good. Founder Ryan Olson and member Zack Coulter (otherwise of Solid Gold) were nice enough to answer some of TNG’s questions about being straight. Check ‘em out!

There is very little chance that you would mix up Eli “Paper Boy” Reed and Sharon Jones if you only saw their pictures. But put on their music and it gets a little murkier. For someone who looks like the missing Jonas Brother (not a bad thing) he’s got more soul in his little finger than I do at all. But I’m also a sad, washed up person so maybe that’s not saying much. More soul in his hair than Adam Levine’s whole body? More soul in one lapel of his sharkskin suit than Hall or Oates, but not both at the same time? Either way I like Eli’s music a lot and was psyched that he answered these questions.

True story: DJ Will Eastman, DC’s preeminent spinner and all-around-nice guy, once asked me to appear in a music video of his. (It’s embedded below, and pardon my awful dance moves.) He had a cameo playing the “barback” and I made a joke about “barbacking” not being very safe. Of everyone in the room, he’s the only one who laughed, because he was the only hetero present that knew what I was talking about.

One of my favorite bands of 2009 is quickly becoming one of my favorite bands of 2010. Dreampop extraordinaires A Sunny Day in Glasgow (who you may remember from their TNG TV cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere”) are about to embark on a small tour in support of their great new album, “Autumn Again.” It’s cool enough that you can download the whole thing for free on their website, but its even cooler that frontman Ben Daniels answered some of our questions about being straight as well. A band who sounds like Cocteau Twins? An open minded straight guy? A free new album? I think it’s about to be a sunny day in my office as well

Suckers is an indie rock band from, brace yourselves, Williamsburg! Who saw that coming? But they are bringing their quirky rock across the country this spring, first at Portland’s MusicFest NorthWest, and later in a string of tour dates with similarly minded (and located) Menomena. Those dates kick off September 10th in Seattle (and tonight in Pittsburgh, without Menomena) and that seemed as good a time as any to ask frontman Quinn Walker to answer our ever-ponderous questions about being straight. Thanks, Quinn!

I’m gonna say this once: Fuck Baltimore. It’s a great city but they have a habit of getting live shows that we don’t. For example, Atari Teenage Riot. The German industrial punks recently reunited and have been signed to Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak record label. They aren’t gracing DC with their presence yet, but are hitting a bunch of other cities in the next week or so. You can see their full tour dates and a video below the interview.

And what an interview it is! Frontman Alec Empire confesses he might not be straight, talks about tits and paints a pretty vivid picture of growing up Berlin. Check it out!

How do you measure success? In the case of solo act Moneybrother (Nee’ Anders Wendin,) it’s not his smoothly infectious mix of hummable disco/rock, or his high profile tours with bands like Rhett Miller and Franz Nicolay. It’s not the buzz behind his new , Real Control, or the Swedish grammy he won for his 2003 debut. It’s not how much I like the song “Born Under a Bad Sign,” embedded below. Nope, Moneybrother (named for the two words his brother could pronounce in English) has a brand of Swedish tomato soup that bears his name. That, ladies and gentlemen, is success.

Beards? Check. Flannel? Check. Canadian heritage? Check, Check, Check. Blog rockers Hey Rosetta! hits all the accepted visual landmarks of what makes a contemporary band “indie” but they’ve also mastered a couple of the other nuances, like pretty voices and tight, earnest songwriting, that make them a natural inclusion in the pantheon of TNG’s queried straight people. Their frontman Tim Baker was nice enough to answer our questions, even if he does wanna bang Michael Buble.

Providence new wave revivalists, MakeUpBreakUP, will soon be launching an East Coast tour. So what better time to get acquainted with them? Like We Are Scientists, this trio is neither a chillwave group or someone who takes themselves too seriously. We need more bands like that. So check ‘em out.

Call them post-Peaches? NYC electro-raunch duo Hank & Cupcakes call to mind any number of cheeky new-new wave bands like New Young Pony Club, all which trace their ancestry from the Filthy—mouthed Corset Queen. A band like this screams “bi vibe” but are actually a married couple from Israel who were at least straight enough to answe