Our 8hands octopus fell in love with one of the Hot Toddies (but refused to tell us which one of the twee girl band is his chosen one). To make him happy we interviewed them – otherwise he wouldn't keep his big mouth shut.

The Hot Toddies are every man's dream. They are a sweet-as-can-be all girl group that’s hooked up on surf and 50's music. Just like in the All Girl Summer Fun Band, you can find in their songs a little bit of a punk attitude and a whole lot of self awareness, but the aesthetics remains in the areas of other cute twee acts.

In their debut album, "Smell the Mitten" They sing about boys, getting horny and online romance ("I should have seen I'm only 15 and you're 32 / you don't love me / I went and asked Jeeves / he told me it's true"). We wanted their next album to talk about eight handed octopuses, so we grabbed them tightly and tried to make them like us.

How twee and joyful are you in real life?

"As happy as a kid with a Slurpee on a hot summer day! All the time. Really".

It seems like your album borrows a lot of influences from other girl bands, like The All Girl Summer Fun Band and The Pipettes. Do you look at them as a reference or are you into the originals?

"That’s a funny question because none of us have ever heard the Pipettes or the All Girls Summer Fun Band! Is that surprising? We’ve definitely gotten some ideas from oldies, they have such great harmonies and simple chords like we use in 'HTML' and 'Sugar Daddy'. But overall we have extremely diverse influences as a band and other songs reflect that as well like 'Rocker Girl', 'Anais Nin', 'Photosynthesis', or anything on our EP. Sylvia lately listens to mostly classic rock and metal, Jessica has been listening to mostly instrumental and experimental indie bands, and Erin and Heidi are all over the place between oldies, punk rock, indie pop and everything in between. Another influence is our local group of extremely talented musicians who we sometimes get together with to share ideas at an open mic or at a bar. Is it maybe just the all girls singing harmonies that makes people think of the 50’s? We feel like anything that rocks our world can be an influence, it’s definitely not limited to a certain genre".

Still, there are limits… which artist or band would you describe as the complete opposite to The Hot Toddies?

"Dillinger Escape Plan. They are awesome and totally unlike us".

How do you use social networks as indie artists and as private persons?

"Myspace is basically our main website. We use it to communicate with fans, venues, other bands and also to sell merch online. YouTube is a site that we haven’t used much yet because we’re still working on our first music video for 'Motorscooter', but we’ve seen other live videos from our shows posted up there".

What are the weirdest comments & messages that you've got from people in myspace?

"Honestly, we couldn’t really say. We kind of ignore the weird ones because most people are really supportive! We even just started up our own Street Team because so many fans wanted to help us out so that is really cool".

What does a street team do exactly?

"A street team is just a group for fans that want to help promote the band and spread the music in different ways. It's really a huge help to bands on indie labels who don't have the money to do nationwide or worldwide promotions through regular advertising, especially if they want to go out on a big tour like we do. That way you can get your street team in different cities to promote the show for you, put up flyers and invite their friends online. Our street team sign up is on: www.reverbnation.com/TheHotToddies if anyone wants to check it out. There are a couple different missions you can do to promote The Hot Toddies and if you do, we'll send you free stuff like CD's, pins and t-shirts!"

That's great! But let me go back a bit and understand something. Unlike what you've sang in 'HTML' you don't get too many mails from "40 year old losers" who are trying to get lucky with The Hot Toddies.

"Well actually 'HTML' was written more from a general awareness of how people use the internet than from any real life experience. You know you hear the stories on the news about young kids falling in love and getting lied to online? People can misrepresent themselves in really convincing ways on the internet! So those people are really the only “losers” that we know of and they’re totally hypothetical characters… usually we love 40 year olds".

Does it bother you that a lot of fans will listen to your music online instead of buying the album?

"Hey not at all! Of course we try to support indie bands by buying their stuff and hope that you can too. But sometimes people can’t afford it and that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get music. Sometimes we can’t afford stuff like that! We didn’t start playing music to make tons of cash either, shocking right?"

And do you find new music online?

"Not really. Most new stuff that we hear gets passed around from a friend - maybe they found it online, who knows? – or from just playing shows with other bands. Live music is a much more exciting way to discover new stuff".

So what are your recent discoveries?

"Jessica is newly in love with Broken Social Scene. Can’t think of any other brand new ones… can we talk about tv series’ instead? Cause then we’d have a long list for you: Six Feet Under, Project Runway (that’s all Sylvia), Nip/Tuck, Weeds, Arrested Development".

Buster from Arrested Development kinda had only one hand. That's not how we roll! What would you do if you had EIGHT hands?

"Mix cocktails, eat chicken pho (Vietnamese noodle soup), play guitar hero and high five each other – all at the same time".