Sweden's biggest and ballsiest musical export -- and the first since the Cardigans to make a serious dent in the country's reputation for only cranking out underage pop stars or disco anthems -- is fronted by a pixie-sized blonde with the best legs in music since Tina Turner and more attitude (and crotch grabs) than a righteous hair metal rocker.

Before hunkering down back in their homeland to record their third album, The Sounds played a short run of stateside dates and lead singer Maja Ivarsson (pronounced Maya) made one exception to her no-press working vacation. She tells Out.com all about her girlfriend of three years, the pretty boys in her band, and how even breaking three ribs on stage won't slow her down.

Out: The Sounds have toured almost non-stop since 1999, but you've only put out two albums. I take it you prefer playing live.
Maja Ivarsson: Oh yeah, I do. I like being in the studio a lot more now than I used to, but we're first of all a live act. Our first show a lot of people came, and for every show we did, we got another two shows. We had like a hundred shows even before we had a record deal.

And you haven't stopped since. I read that you played 200 dates in 2006. Is that true?
Yeah, 210 shows.

What about this year?
Quite similar.

Are you ever going to get some time off?
Actually we're supposed to be at home right now! But Los Angeles for us is the best city in the world for us to play. This is the one place on Earth where I actually do feel like a rock star. At home people are so cold emotionally -- if they see me somewhere maybe they point at you and whisper something but they never come up and say, “I love your band!”

Does that happen here?
Oh yeah. All the time. Three times today already.

When will your next album come out?
We hope within a year. We have a hard time writing songs on tour. We can be very disciplined if we have a deadline. If we don't, we're like, let's do something else -- let's go do a show!

Is there anything you want to do really different this time around?
We wrote [the last album] like every song should be a single, so that you could pick any one of these 10 or 11 songs and it could be a hit. This next record -- I don't want to say we've matured that much, because I don't think we have, but still we have a little bit more experience and we know our strengths and weaknesses a lot better.

Your shows are so full of energy. Do you plan that, or do you just get carried away?
I would say the energy is all natural. It's been like that since the first day we played, because it's almost like a perfect relationship with the band's chemistry. I've never had the same feeling about a band as I do now. We do love each other. We love to hang out even when we have time off.

Tell me about the boys in your band.
Me and Felix, the guitar player, were in art class together in high school, and Fredrik the drummer and Johan the bass player live in the same area. As you can see, they're not very macho kind of guys, and I'm very tomboyish. So I think we have a good mix of personalities. They're very funny people. Of course they're still boys -- and all that always comes along with being a boy.

How does that work out on the road?
If I was out with a girl band, I think I would have quit the band six years ago. Women can be so difficult to hang out with sometimes. And guys are so straightforward. Sometimes it's sad, because girls -- we can feel the tension and the vibes, and we can talk about emotions if you feel sad. [With guys] you only get, you know, “C'mon!”

“Buck up!”
Exactly! But it is good for me, because I'm so emotional, so I think they balance me out.

Watching you on stage, I'm reminded of American movies from the '40s -- like Jane Russell, a little campy but also very powerful. Who inspires your performances?
Since I'd never sung before joining the band, I had to focus on my stage persona, something that I could rely on. I don't hit every note perfect, I know that. I'm off-key sometimes. And the guys are good musicians but they're not super good -- well, Jesper, he's really good, but [the rest of us] are okay. But I think what people will remember when they leave the show is what it looked like, what happened on stage, not, “She didn't hit that D!”


NEXT PAGE >> 1, 2, 3