July 24 [7:55 EDT] -- Rock pundits and casual listeners have tagged Boys Against Girls as one of the sexiest bands walking, and that's just fine with the band.

"When it first started happening, it was great," vocalist/guitarist Scott McCloud recently told MTV News Online. "I still think it's great 'cause it's better to be referred to as a noisy, sexy band than a noisy band with no songs."

Rather than being the product of four pretty faces, this sexy banner owes a good deal to the band's dark, dense, fuzzy grooves, which were previously cultivated on Chicago's Touch & Go Records, and will soon debut on Geffen Records.

The band's last effort, 1996's "House of GVSB" (it's last release for the Chicago-based indie label), earned the group a spot on Lollapalooza's second stage, a deal with Geffen, and whole lot of ink chronicling the band's "liquid sex" sound...and yes, it got old after a while.

"On the last record, everything written about us talked about sexiness," McCloud said. "To a certain point you go 'Hmmm, what does that have to do with anything?' You do wish you'd see more detailed descriptions of the music we make because we spend a lot of time making the music... a lot more than we do thinking about if we're sexy or not."

While all the talk of image can be a little distracting to GVSB, the group is well aware that it's a big part of life in the music business.

"It seems to be the fact of the matter," GVSB bassist Johnny Temple told MTV News Online. "I think that pop musicians and rock musicians, if you are going to enter that sort of commercial arena, it's something that you have to reconcile yourself. But if you want to be just a musician, then maybe you should be playing classical music or jazz music, because rock 'n roll music really does have a long tradition that isn't just music. Maybe it's not really 50-50. Maybe 75 percent music 25 percent style and imaging and stuff."

The group also seems acutely aware of another tenet of the music biz: that a major label deal is no guarantee of success. While GVSB are looking forward to the breathing room and creative control that their Geffen deal will afford them, they know that other bands have had less luck with majors.

"So many bands are hoodwinked on the financial front," Temple noted. "It's depressing when you see a friend's band signed to a major label, and there's all this excitement, and then 12 months later, they're back working at the record shop... not because they love the record shop, but because they need the $6 an hour."

The group will begin its major label experiment in late August when the GVSB double-bass assault will head into the studio, and the band could have its Geffen debut set for release in early 1998.

This time out, the group is teaming with producer Nick Launay, whose credits include work with Midnight Oil, Killing Joke, and PiL.

"There's definitely a new direction happening," Temple said of the group's new material.

"It's kind of hard to describe. There's sort of a more electronic and more sample driven component coming into it a little bit. But at the same time I was noticing when we played a couple of songs for the first time that they fit very well in with all the other music that we've done because it's still the four of us."

That trademark GVSB sound has always been about bringing the basses of Temple and Eli Janney, McCloud's guitar, Alexis Fleisig's drums, and assorted keyboards together in a dangerous groove.

"We start out with this really bass, low-end thing and we kinda put a lot of other stuff on it, and it still kinda retains that essence of this low-end groove, which is where some of the darkness comes from." McCloud said of the band's sound. "I know for me that a lot of the music I like does have kind of an ominous quality to it, while not being totally depressing."

Fans can sample the sound when GVSB turns up at this weekend's Mt. Fuji festival in Japan, alongside Rage Against the Machine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Foo Fighters. After that, they'll just have to wait until the band's major label debut arrives early next year.