About a week ago today, the delicate Canadian indie-pop group TOPS came to D.C. to shred the stage at DC9. Didn‰’t get to see them? Rough. Never heard of them before? Well lucky for you, that‰’s why I‰’m here.

The night before the group trekked on down to the District, I was lucky enough to snag a quick interview with the charmingly bad-ass 26 year-old lead singer Jane Penny to virtually chat about being on tour, their sound, Penny‰’s hatred of high school musicals and, of course, what any American millennial will ever bring up to a Canadian ‰ÛÓ Drake.

So take me back here‰Û_how‰’d you all decide to form the band Tops?

_Jane Penny: _Well David [Carriere, guitar] and I had been making music together for a while and at the time Riley [Fleck, drums] had been practicing the drums and he didn‰’t have a band. We wanted to start a new band and Maddy [Glowicki, bass] started a few months ago to help us play the live material. But we officially formed in 2011 and have been playing ever since.

Nice. Who would you compare your sound most to?

J.P.: Hmm‰Û_I‰’d probably say we‰’re like Steely Dan with a girl singer.

That‰’s probably the best answer you could ever give me.

J.P.: Haha yeah, it‰’s pretty awesome.

I know I interrupted you during sound check‰ÛÓhow‰’s touring going?

_J.P.: _It‰’s going well. We actually have a new record that we just finished and we‰’ve been playing a lot of material from that and it‰’s been really cool. There have been a lot of people who have responded to the material and responded to our shows and it‰’s been really cool to meet them, and, I don‰’t know, play for them.

Since you brought up your new album…can you tell me the name of it?

J.P.: Ooh I don‰’t think I can‰Û_but right now August is the rough date for when it‰’s coming out.

Got it. What‰’s your favorite song on it?

J.P: Whoa‰Û_that‰’s a tough one. There‰’s a song called “Way To Be Loved‰” that I feel like is‰Û_well I think the record has a lot of really “band‰” moments and then there are also a lot of electronic, almost esoteric parts to the record, and that song kind of has everything. So I think it‰’s the most definitive song on the record. I actually like a lot of material on this record though, I‰’m pretty proud of it.

Why‰’s that?

J.P.: Well I feel like I‰’ve grown a lot while making this record. Just the experience of playing live and getting to tour‰ÛÓwe never really toured before for the past record, so getting to make revisions together, playing together, making new material. We‰’re basically working on it everyday. I also wrote a lot of the songs on this record, so that‰’s really exciting. We just really got into that zone, you know?

Do you think being from Montreal has any sort of influence on the band or your sound?

J.P.: Well I don‰’t think there are a lot of parallels between the music that we make and other Montreal musicians necessarily, but just like how cheap it is to live there and the resources that we had‰Û_we ended up recording the whole record in a side room in the Arbutus [Records] office, and because rent is so cheap in Montreal and because we always had access to that room, we were able to spend every day, almost all day on the record, which just like‰Û_would not be possible in any other city.

That makes sense.

J.P.: Yeah, and I guess for me since I only started singing a few years ago, for me to actually get good at what I wanted to do it was really important to have a lot of time.

When did you start singing?

J.P.: When I was 19. I started singing because David and Sean Nicholas Savage wrote a pop record for fun and had a bunch of vocals they were singing in falsetto because they wanted a girl to sing it, and then Sean just asked David to bring his friend around and they got me to record vocals on the record. And I started playing shows and I got really into it.

Oh and I always hated choir and musicals and shit like that‰Û_that shit is sooo not my thing. So I didn‰’t really have any exposure to that in high school or anything, it wasn‰’t until later that I started to get into it.

Well one more question before I let you go‰Û_have you ever met Drake?

J.P.: If I know Drake? No hahahaha. I don‰’t.