They aren't treasure hunters..they're just Thieves and Villians!

In personal opinion, this next band is one of the most musically minded I have come across, and one of the most hard working ones! Thieves and Villains, better known as TAV to fans have overcome some huge hardships. The two founding members still in the band Sergio Otaegui and Christoper Pennings realized early this year that if the band was still going to happen, they would need to separate from the other two members and luckily they did.

After Chris Competiello and Joseph Penna joined the band, their sound became extremely powerful and something people have fallen in love with. They have been working hard on their first full album as the current band and hopefully all these continued efforts will pay off for them in 2010. I recently got the chance to sit down via the inter webs with Sergio, who both plays guitar and provides some of the vocals for the band! We talked about everything from the music they are big fans of themselves to their songwriting process! Check them out more on their myspace here and let me know what you think!

How did you come up with the name Thieves and Villains?
To get ahead in life/business/anything most people have to step on others and engage in negative or sketchy behaviour, so we decided that from day one we would run this band with good morals and be straight up with everyone we dealt with. Because of that, we figured we'd name the band "Thieves and Villains" so we as people wouldn't have to be.

What is your favorite album of 2009 thus far?
That's so hard to say because we listen to a ton of music from all different artists but here are some current favorites and some that we're really looking forward to:

current faves of 09

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything to Nothing

Passion Pit - Manners

Arctic Monkeys - Humbug

Chester French - Love The Future

Anthony & The Johnsons -The Crying Light

Mos Def - The Ecstatic

Fabolous - Loso's Way

lookin forward to in 09

Clipse - Til The Casket Drops

Tokyo Police Club - TBA

Vampire Weekend - TBA(Contra)

Wale - Attention Deficit

Kid Cudi - Man on The Moon

How do you go about the song writing process? Does one person write the songs or is it more of a collective effort?
Chris Pennings and myself are the main songwriters, so typically we'll bring in ideas to practice and start from there. Sometimes we'll bring in a virtually completed song and just direct everyone else on what to do. Other times, we'll just have the tiniest sliver of an idea and everyone else will through their two cents in. Even sometimes, someone will bring in a song that we thought was finished but it ends up being changed around completely, and for the better. It always happens a little different each time.

What are your major influences?
Every piece of art we've ever seen, every piece of music we've ever listened to, every book we've ever read, every person we've ever met and every great sight we've ever seen.

If you could tour with any three acts, who would they be?

That's such a hard one because obviously we're inclined to say "Bob Dylan!" or some other classic artist, but as far as more contemporary people I'd love to tour with The Artic Monkeys, The Killers and Kanye West.

Who are you personally listening to these days?
All of those albums we listed above plus some other great artists like Lykke Li, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Crystal Castles, the xx, Bob Dylan, Ray Lamontagne. Just a lot of everything really.

Do you ever play covers? If so, which ones?
We've yet to play a cover in this band, but we're planning to do 'stand by me' in our live sets soon.

What are you up to right now, music wise?
Just finishing out about 3/4 more months of touring off of our first album and then going into writing and recording for our second album. We're very excited about that because we've been writing in all of our free time between touring all year and we're really happy with all the ideas we have.