Free hugs from Quiet Company

If you haven't heard of Quiet Company, you soon will. Vocalist and main songwriter Taylor Muse has the ability to write a great hook. Using his personal experiences and issues, audiences will immediately become connected to their catchy power pop.

Released in early March, the guys held CD release shows for their most recent album "Everyone You Love Will be Happy Soon" in Austin and another in San Antonio where they shared the stage with The Toadies.

"It was just mind blowing," said Muse. "It was one of the best experiences ever. We were really nervous about it. We're not a heavy band."

Luckily, the crowd seemed to have an open mind.

"We sold some CDs just from sound check," said Muse. "And so we started thinking this might not be so bad."

When most bands self-record an album with no label support, it usually takes more than a month to record. However, this band recorded their album in an impressive 13 days.

"They were long days," said Muse. "The mixing took forever. Charlie [Vela, producer] lives in south Texas and he was mixing the whole record. So we were having to mix through e-mail. That was just a horrible way to make a record and we ended up just having to drive there and in a few hours, we fixed everything."

During this year's South by Southwest Music Festival, attendees saw members of Quiet Company walking along Sixth Street wearing handmade cardboard signs on their bodies that said "Free Hugs from Quiet Company."

Using this tactic, they hugged willing and not so willing participates from various parts of the world. In return, those fans were introduced to the album personally through the earphones of the mp3 players the guys were carrying.

"This idea originally seemed like the dumbest thing possible … to promote ourselves," said Tommy Blank, multi-instrumentalist. "But turned out to be really awesome."

"We got so much more attention from that than we did from playing any actual show[s]," said Muse. "When we played our show at Vintage Lounge at the end of the week, I said 'How many people here did we hug this week?' About half the crowd raised their hand. We were featured on a lot of blogs and [the] L.A. Times and Houston Press. It got us some attention, and we're really happy with it."

"My only regret is that I only have two arms," said Blank.

Other projects in the works for Quiet Company are a new album, which will most likely be a short EP, and a musical. Instead of being like "Les Miserable" or another Broadway production, the format will be more like "Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog" with short mini-sodes that feature two or three songs centered on a pet store.

"I've been working at a pet store for 5 years," said Muse. "Yeah it's going to be good. We'll have to get actors that can sing and that'll be weird. I've never had any experience with people doing my [music]."