Rogers Sisters at the Kings Arms

The Rogers Sisters are (from left) Jennifer and Laura, and Miyuki Furtado.

Jennifer Rogers uses the word "tonnes" a lot. It's a real kids' word - tonnes of lollies, tonnes of this, and tonnes of that. It's fitting because her band, the Rogers Sisters, refuse to grow up.

And why should they? Jennifer (guitar/vocals), her sister Laura (drums/vocals) and their bass playing singer friend Miyuki Furtado have the best job in the world.

And when they're not on tour (they play the Kings Arms tomorrow night), the sisters' hip New York bar, Daddys, in the Italian neighbourhood of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, keeps them busy. What a life.

"I guess we don't want to grow up because we don't have real jobs or anything and we're travelling all the time in these crazy circumstances," she says in her cute voice (like Phoebe from Friends crossed with Gwen Stefani). But it's not annoying. Jennifer's too happy to be annoying.

"The best part of travelling is meeting different people. As a band you get to a city and someone picks you up from the airport that you have tonnes in common with, usually a kooky person, so it's usually really fun.

"Firstly, when we arrive [in a new city] we make a list of restaurants we want to go to and secondly we make a list of things we want to see. We worry about the venue and the music later," she says with a bubbly giggle.

The Rogers Sisters are a rock'n'roll band of psychedelic, dance and punk proportions. Plus they soak everything in lashings of heavy yet clean rhythms, similar to their idols ESG, the South Bronx band of sisters whose music affected everything from hip-hop to rock to house.

The ESG influence comes through on the galactic rock of Freight Elevator and the shouty Check Level from the trio's mini-album, Three Fingers.

"Rhythm is one of our main elements, and ESG are just perfect at it. They're almost completely rhythm. I play guitar pretty percussively, Miyuki was a drummer in bands for years and sometimes he pounds his bass, the evidence being it's broken today, like I told you," she says.

"So apart from beating on the instruments," she laughs, "some of the things we play are quite rhythmic too. But we're different to ESG because they're funky, but there's definitely a dancey and a rhythm element that we take from them."

ESG are also a family, made up primarily of the Scroggin sisters. So does the family connection add a unique element to the Rogers Sisters?

Jennifer thinks not. "The more we travel around and play with other bands, tonnes more bands are siblings than you would think. At least half the bands we play with have siblings in, so maybe, it's natural to like wanna play music together."

Jennifer, the older sister, and Laura didn't get on very well when they were younger. "I was probably jealous of her so I was probably mean to her. But when we were teenagers we got to be friends and now we're really close, we're in a band together, we own a business together, and we live one block away from each other."

When they were young their dad owned a wholesale record shop and was "really into Blondie".

A lot of music stars stopped by to see him which meant the sisters got backstage passes to concerts. "We saw Prince in concert, Michael Jackson ... tonnes and tonnes of groups we saw live."

They formed the Rogers Sisters in 1999 and played around New York doing covers ("Songs that we thought were fun to play and made us laugh.").

They released their debut album Purely Evil in 2003 and last year's Three Fingers was meant to be an interlude before their next album. "But it turned out being our album for the year," she says.

There will always be that rhythmic and pop element to their songs but the band's plan is to do something different on every album. On the follow up to Three Fingers (due out later this year) they want to use more "texture", an influence they've taken from bands that they like at the moment.

"Most of the people we know right now are into really heavy music like psychedelic music. It's really popular. There's a new record coming out soon - and I haven't heard it yet - by the band Oneida. They do lots of heavy orchestral soundscape type stuff. Plus folkier things like White Magic, so there's a lot of folk and psychedelia going round which isn't really quite what we do but it's definitely influencing us in terms of the texture.

"You'll certainly see a little of that coming out in us, but it won't be like a Kraut rock record or anything.

"Musically I think we stand out a bit because we don't sound like a lot of people. I'm not trying to say we're cool, it's just that we happen to be doing something different."

Performance

*Who: The Rogers Sisters, made up of Jennifer Rogers (guitar/vocals), Laura Rogers (drums/vocals) and Miyuki Furtado (bass/vocals). \
*When & where: Tomorrow night, the Kings Arms Tavern.
*Albums: Purely Evil (2003); Three Fingers (2004)