The Virgins

“We’re a good band because we don’t have any style,” Virgins’ bassist Nick Zarin-Ackerman says of his New York group that hadn’t even officially formed before they were opening for Sonic Youth and touring with Jet. Tell that to the girls who dotingly cuff their jeans at every Virgins concert, a tribute to the band’s signature clothing trick that, like their rising fame, just kind of…happened. “We got these free jeans and they were too long, so we rolled them,” Guitarist Wade Oates insists. “I don’t know how it became a thing!” Assembled by Oates and singer Donald Cumming in 2007, the foursome is a schoolgirl’s dream come true (the founders are former models while Zarin-Ackerman and drummer Erik Ratensberger are cut from the same hipster/artist cloth that regularly sends hearts aflutter). Then there’s the music-catchy dance jams that spread like wildfire last year through word of mouth and secret concerts at house parties, in bathrooms, and once at New York’s famed nightclub Bungalow 8 (”Although that was a bit of a disaster,” grins Nick, “Because all these socialites were there but the sound was so bad!”). After releasing their six-song EP, exciting a record label bidding war over songs like, “Rich Girls,” an anthem to an unattainable table at the school cafeteria, and “One Week of Danger,” an ode to sneaking out of the house, driving to the nearest city, crashing a celebrity party, and making it home undetected, the band signed with Atlantic Records and released their first full-length album this Spring. So what’s in the future for the Virgins? Another record, rumors of a clothing campaign for a denim brand, and of course the NYLON Summer Music Tour. “We’re obviously psyched to share our music with so many people around the country,” says Donald, “But we’re nervous because we always need the bathroom. What are we gonna do when our tour bus is going through the middle of nowhere and we need the bathroom?”-a problem that is likely to be their biggest this year, since rock superstardom is pretty much a sure bet. -- Nylon Summer Music Tour