Handsome Furs are a zeitgeist-y Montreal two-piece who sing about their disdain for cities and technology, and for being away from cities and without technology. But all that’s really just an excuse for the two lovebirds, Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry, to honeymoon in perpetuity, visiting places like Finland, Russia and now China, trapping travellers’ anecdotes in snow globes, which they then press really, really flat, turning them into startling, stirring albums.

Dan Boeckner (guitar, vocals) and Alexei Perry (synths, drum machines) first met while working at a telemarketing company, but they didn’t hook up until bumping into each other again at a gig three years later. At that time, Boeckner had already established himself with the band Wolf Parade, but given his band-mate Spencer Krug was already cheating on him with his own (awesome) band Sunset Rubdown, Boeckner had no qualms enlisting his then girlfriend, Perry, who had just a few childhood piano lessons and a writing credit for Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul under her belt, as his own bit on the side. It was Perry who named the band – The Handsome Furs is the title of one of her stories.

"I just want to make things sound good spooky painful hollow dreamy geeky morbid romantic and heroic depending on how I’m feeling during the genesis."

Fast forward to 2009, and Handsome Furs have established themselves in their own right, put out their second album, Face Control, and are about to embark on a tour of Asia. Consequently, they’ve been doing a lot of press, which, for them, has meant taking lots and lots of photos of them making out.

“There’s a lot of sexiness in mainstream music (take all your pop divas, for example) but it is not relatable to me,” Perry says. “I don’t understand ‘sexiness’ that is pretty and polished; I want to see unhappy and strange people f**cking because then I feel like I, too, have a shot for joy. We chose to make-out in our press shots because I think sex is one of the best things you get to experience in life and I wanted other oddball humans (ie our fans) to know their potential. Plus, I love kissing Dan.”

Perry is being modest – Handsome Furs are much hotter than they are odd. Yet there’s a strong feeling of estrangement in their music, which is also integral to their creative process. “In everything I do artistically,” Perry says. “I feel like an alien. In all artistic pursuits, you have the option to work within conventional means, to choose stylistic mediums. I am lucky that I don’t want to do that. I work on a very gut level: instead of wanting to sound like No-wave/Electro/Jazz/Punk/Power Pop, I just want to make things sound good spooky painful hollow dreamy geeky morbid romantic and heroic depending on how I’m feeling during the genesis.”

Feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction are also prominent in the Furs’ lyrics, even in songs with buoyant, infectious riffs like ‘I’m Confused’. But such contradictions are no concern for a band who blames much of their uneasiness on both cities and small towns.

“In small towns,” Perry says, “your access to things you’re most interested in is very limited. You have to be very earnest in finding out about other cultures and other thoughts and ways of being and other music and other art, and I struggled with that immensely. In cities, you can also feel very remote, very unknowable, very forced upon by other people. You must struggle to live with others in ways that seem so unlivable and unlikable.”

But Perry has found a way to mitigate these frustrations. “I get the best of all worlds because we get to travel to both tiny boring little remote and rural locations all over and also to wild frenzied metropolises. I guess the best way to dodge those limitations is to travel. I think the best creative people often feel dissatisfied with their existence so my advice to them is: go everywhere you can.”