THE quest for new adjectives to describe bands is a never-ending one.

Shiny Toy Guns' charming press officer has opted for "future-forward rock" to apply to the American band.

Boasting both a male and a female singer, Shiny Toy Guns obviously have a healthy respect for Duran Duran, which happily offsets their otherwise worrying My Chemical Romance leanings - particularly on standout track and former single Le Disko.

The four-piece have a level of ambition that many contemporary bands would feel "uncool" admitting.

They mapped out the topography of We Are Pilots for years before they started making it, but their perfectionism meant that the album would always be difficult to create.

"It was a ridiculous amount of work, " says keyboardist Jeremy Dawson. "We wrote the songs, and we would make our own demo, print 1,000 CDs, then get a new piece of gear or learn to use our equipment the right way, and suddenly be re-excited all over again. So then we would re-record the whole album. We did that four times."

Dawson and singer/guitarist Chad Petree are childhood friends, and at one point had some success together with the electronica group Slyder.

"We were head-on in the middle of dance culture, and trance was God," says dawson. "But it didn't work out because we weren't happy at all.

"There were lots of drugs, lots of dancing and a lot of repetitive arrangements and samples, but there weren't so many songs.

"It's amazing and fun to compose music for having a good time, but we yearned to get back into a room together and write songs that move your face, thinks that change the way you ever thought about anything."

Shiny Toy Guns believe in the communal aspects of great music. If it was the 60s, they'd no doubt be living in San Francisco. Instead, they're united with their like-minded peers and fans via the web.

"Zeroes and ones are a nuclear weapon for a band," says Dawson. "You could use it and no-one can slow you down or tell you what to do."

And on We Are Pilots, they oscillate between chirpy electronic pop and full-on rock.

"There's a lot of contrast in what we do," says Dawson. "But this is simply an important part of expressing what it's like to be human. We want to find a new colour to paint with... and use it to make amazing pictures. Because when music history is written, we don't want to be a footnote, we want to be an entire chapter. "

We Are Pilots is out on Monday