The Virgins on newfound success, and why a solid band name always begins with "the"

Donald Cumming's New Years resolution was to not quit smoking. And it seems he's a man of his word: out on his stoop, the SoHo-born indie rocker puffs on a P-funk before we ascend to the 4th floor of an unassuming walk-up where he and his band, The Virgins, rehearse.

The band was formed back in 2005 when vocalist and main songwriter Donald met lead guitarist Wade Oates at a Ryan McGinley photo shoot in Mexico. (We're still looking for the naked pictures.) Since then, they've gained three members: bassist Nick Zarin-Ackermann, drummer Erik Ratensperger, and the newly added rhythm guitarist Paul Vassallo. They've also been signed to Atlantic Records, released a self-titled debut album, and had their songs featured on the popular TV shows Gossip Girl and Entourage.

Radar recently met up with the five indie rockers to talk about their newfound success, pranks they've played on their manager, and the tragic death of the "the" band.

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RADAR: Who's the new guy? How did you find him?
Donald: Paul [Vassallo] is a rhythm guitarist and a vocalist. He'll be joining us for our upcoming shows and tours. We sent out a lot of texts and emails to friends who are musicians to see if they knew anybody who would get along with us and be able to play. Sean, who engineered our record, put us in touch with Paul.

When did he officially join the band?
Donald: Yesterday. We got a chance to play with each other just before we went to California last week.

So was it a text message romance?
Donald: It started as a text message, then it blossomed into...
Wade: A love letter.
Donald: I drafted up a calligraphy love letter. And then I hired a skywriting team...
Paul: He got them to fly by my house. It was quite beautiful.
Donald: Yeah, it was really romantic.

Do you have any new songs planned for the tour that starts on September 13?
Nick: We've got everything.
Wade: Everything you've ever heard before, played all at once.
Donald: We have a few new songs in the set. We have some old songs that we haven't played in a while that we just started playing again. And, we're actually gonna be going to Europe before that to do a small tour for about two and half, three weeks. So, by the time we actually start the Black Kids tour we'll probably be playing a pretty different set than what we've been playing.

How will it be different from what you've done before?
Donald: For one thing, I won't be playing as much guitar, if any, since Paul's mostly taking over that. And there are about 4 new songs.

Vice magazine said that "'Rich Girls' is the catchiest song of the last three years and counting." Is catchy what you guys are going for, or do you ever look for something deeper?
Donald: I don't think that I would put a quantity on catchy, to say that catchy means shallow.
Nick: Yeah, I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive.
Donald: We definitely write songs with a melody in mind and if you work hard enough on a melody then, there are certain rules that you follow that make melodies inevitably become catchy. We grew up listening to popular music, and popular music is definitely something that we aspire to make.

Most music reviewers rave about your bass lines. Paul Ford described your sound as "Dance-rock with highly functional bass." How do you guys come up with them?
Donald: There you go. (He points to bassist Nick Zarin-Ackerman) That's my guy.
Nick: That's not true. I wrote that "Rich Girls" bass line on the spot. Donald and I are both new to bass. I'm not a bass player, I'm a guitar player. So we come up with those bass lines just as two guys who don't really know any of the conventions of playing bass. We're just winging it, trying to fake it I guess.
Donald: We're also bass enthusiasts. I don't know if that's common in rock or not, but we love drums and bass, so we pay more attention maybe to the bass lines than other musicians.

What's the general idea behind the "Rich Girls" lyrics?
Donald: Generally, the song is about growing up in the city and hanging out with different people, especially downtown where there's a real cross-section of people. You meet people who have no money and people who have a whole lot of it. Being a teenager or a young adult in New York means you meet a lot of people from disparate backgrounds. There's something fun about everybody coming from different places but having this scene they share.

Are you talking about the sort of New York City class divisions that Billy Joel sings about in "Uptown Girl"?
Donald: I don't want to pin it down to that specifically. It's definitely not much deeper than that...

The dialogue lyrics at the end of "Rich Girls" always seemed a little confusing. The part about going down to the girl's house and the broken mirror on the bed. Where does that come from?
Donald: I did the spoken part pretty quickly. I just lifted some lines from a poem that I had written years ago and interspersed it with this night that I spent with a girl who was kind of stuck in my head.