You may not have heard the band Freezepop on the radio before. But chances are, if you've picked up a plastic guitar-shaped video game controller lately, you've played along to the band's music.
The Boston-based synth-pop group has been around for about a decade, but its most dedicated following is among gamers. Freezepop songs appear as bonus tracks in Guitar Hero and Rock Band and are featured in many other video games.
It helps that band member Kasson Crooker — known onstage as The Duke of Pannenkoeken — works for the video game developer Harmonix. When his managers asked if he wanted to put Freezepop's music in a game, the group began to take off.
"Suddenly, people from outside of Boston had this way of hearing about us," says Jussi Gamache, aka Liz Enthusiasm. "And these people would come to our shows and have us sign their video game cases."
Freezepop recently released a new EP called Form Activity Motion. Host Rebecca Roberts spoke with "Liz" and "The Duke" about writing music for both the stage and the screen.
"We definitely want the shows to feel exciting," Gamache says. "You know, everybody has that image of an electronic band just kind of standing there behind their laptop and not doing anything. We want our shows to be high-energy."
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