Few bands over the past few years have inspired as much buzz as Tapes ‘N Tapes — but only the Minneapolis indie-rock quartet can boast a singer who recently got promoted to manager at his data analysis day job. EW grills frontman Josh Grier about Internet hype, suggestive lyrics, and which character from The Office he most resembles when at work.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’re about to play the Siren Music Festival in Coney Island (July 15). Are you planning anything special? Fireworks? Inflatable things? Nudity?
JOSH GRIER: No, we left the pyrotechnics at home. It’ll just be our normal show. But we’ll try to rock pretty hard.

If you bring the rock, everything will be fine. Nietzsche said that.
Ha! That’s right, you don’t need any accessories as long as you rock.

Positive word-of-mouth on your CD The Loon (now reissued on XL) first spread on the Internet. Do you get down on your knees daily and thank God for inventing computers?
Definitely the speed of everything that’s happened over the last eight months, we can pretty much attribute to the Internet. If it wasn’t around, hopefully people would be hearing the record, but it would be taking much longer. Our manager sent out some MP3s to some music blogs back in November — blogs that posted music we liked — and within a week things just started taking off.

You were one of the most talked-about acts at this year’s South by Southwest, where you played eight shows in four days. What was that like?
It was really cool. All of us were… I wouldn’t say scared, but overwhelmed before we even got there. Like, How the hell are we gonna play four shows in a day? But it ended up being a lot of fun. Looking back, it was kind of crazy that we played as much as we did. But, at the time, it was like, Okay, we played — let’s play again!

Def Leppard once played three different continents in one day. So it could be said that you were really being quite lazy.
I think I remember hearing about that. Yeah, we could pick it up a little bit. Once we get our jet, then we’ll really take off.

Keeping on the metal tip, would you ever open for Guns N’ Roses, just because of the cool symmetry of the resulting marquee signage?
If Axl calls us up and wants us to go on tour, I don’t think I’m going to say no. Just as long as Tommy Stinson is still playing bass, because, you know, that’s a little Minneapolis thing [Stinson was the bassist for the Replacements]. I got to see Guns N’ Roses with Buckethead and Tommy Stinson. It was actually amazing. Everybody thought that the show wasn’t going to happen, and then, 30 minutes late, Axl came out on stage and everybody went insane. They rocked.

Your name derives from the fact that you used to record tapes of music in your kitchen. How many hours of stuff did you make?
I think we did three or four tapes’ worth. We’d just start with a 45-minute tape and go until we’d fill it up.

Is any of it any good?
I don’t know. There’s a few novelty songs that are fun to reminisce about. But I don’t know if anybody would ever want to hear it.

Novelty songs? You mean, like, ‘’Weird Al'’ Yankovic?
Not really. But we’d had a few beers, and everything, from lyrics to music, was done straight off the top of our heads. So you get some pretty weird things happening late at night.

Would you care to explain your lyric, ‘’I've been a better lover with your mother'’ from the song ‘’Cowbell'’?
Half the time, when I start writing a song I’ll just mumble things to create a melody, and as it goes along I’ll say things that are semi-coherent and write them down. I just spit out those words during practice and was like, We have to keep that, it’s so ridiculous. I couldn’t believe no one had ever used it before.

That’s a very evasive answer.
It’s the truth — it’s all I got for ya.

Do you still have a day job?
Actually, yeah, I’m here right now. I’m a data analyst, and I manage people, too. When we were on tour I became a manager, so that’s been an interesting experience.

Congratulations! Which character on The Office are you most like at work?
Oh, gosh, I don’t know. If there was a character that kind of kept to himself and didn’t say much, I think that would be me.