Meet the band: You, You're Awesome

The friendship between Yusef Quotah and Kevin Bayer had a musical beginning three years ago, when the two met each other on the WOXY message boards and starting going to music shows together. But it was not until about a year and a half ago that the two actually started making music together.

It all came together when they went to see Holy Fuck and Do Make Say Think in concert. In fact, the band's name comes from the title of a Do Make Say Think song. At the time Quotah was playing around with some electronic arrangements, and seeing Holy Fuck incorporate electronic music with a live drummer made everything click. "We were like, ‘Yes! This is exactly what we want to do," Quotah said.

The band already has two self-released EPs, with a third slated for September, some pretty sweet bunny hoodies and more than a dozen live shows under their belt.

Their next live show is Friday on Fountain Square, where they'll be opening for their good friends and fellow local act Bad Veins. They're such good friends, in fact, that Bad Veins called up Quotah the day before they went the road to play a few Midwest shows to ask him to help out. So in between hauling gear, selling merch and chilling out in a Jacuzzi at the Hyatt Regency in Indianapolis, Quotah took a little time to talk to us about bad drivers, bunny rabbits, baked goods, and a few other awesome things.

You've given out pies and cookies at some of your shows. What do we have to do to get some free baked goods?
You just gotta be lucky and come to the right show. A good friend of ours-his last name just happens to be Baker-Mike Baker is a good friend of ours and he just loves to bake. And at our first show we were like, "Hey, let's have pie!" And he did it. We had like three pies. After that we had cookies and awesome whatever. We will probably only do it for local shows-we probably won't do it for Fountain Square. But if you come to a local show, you might get some baked goods if you are lucky. And they are amazing. That's for sure.

How is awesomeness measured and what is the official unit of measurement?
 A unit of measurement for awesomeness?!?! How do you judge awesome? Man, that is a hard question! How do you judge awesome? I don't know. Awesome is-I don't know how to say that without being absolutely cliché. Well, um, something's awesome if it makes you euphoric and happy, and you're like, "Oh my God, that's awesome! That is great!" If you smile from ear to ear, then it's awesome. I mean you can look in the dictionary and find the real definition of awesomeness, which is just something giant and great. But if it makes you happy it's awesome.

What's at the top of your awesome list and what falls to the bottom?
Let me see. Blueberry pie ice cream from Graeter's is on the top of my awesome list. That is some good stuff. That is my favorite ice cream and that is awesome. Um, what else is on the top of my awesome list? A good night's sleep, which I do not get enough of. What's on the bottom? Terrible drivers, or slow drivers. People who drive slow in the fast lane, that is not awesome. And people who answer their cell phones in movie theaters, definitely not awesome. That happened to me when I went to see Up recently. It is AMAZING. Add that to my awesome list! Pixar, Pixar is awesome.

Your band seems to have a proclivity for rabbits.
Yeah, that actually is completely by accident. It just sort of happened. I draw a lot of strange cartoons and most of the art work for the band is done by me. And I just one day drew these bunnies, these square bunnies that said, "You, you're awesome,"-there was a like a little speech bubble saying, "You, you're awesome." And we just decided to keep using them for different things. At that point it was just kind of an image for the band. So, we decided to stick with it and use bunnies as our image. It wasn't like I love bunnies or they are my favorite animal or anything like that. It just happened accidentally and we keep using them. People seem to like them. If people had been like, "That's really dumb," we'd probably have stopped using them. But people seem to think they're cute and like them, so why not, why not keep going with it?