On the set of his band's photo shoot, Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears politely requests that five mirrored disco balls be removed from the premises. He's seen the Sisters referred to as a "gay disco band" one too many times, and doesn't want to stoke the, um, inferno. "Writers throw out these references because I'm gay and we dabble in dance music," Shears says. "Fuck off. We're not the Village People."

Indeed: The band's self-titled debut album is often campy but never kitschy. And while Shears' falsetto hits helium heights worthy of the brothers Gibb, there's nothing disco about the boisterous single "Take Your Mama," which evokes Elton John at his honky-tonkin'-est, or "Lovers in the Backseat," a seamy tribute to Scary Monsters-era David Bowie. It's an appropriately eclectic range of influences for a band fronted by a former go-go dancer with a degree in fiction writing and a tattooed, statuesque diva (covocalist Ana Matronic) who honed her chops as the ruling "faux queen" at a weekly San Francisco drag show called Trannyshack.

If their reception overseas is any indication, the Sisters will be dazzling American audiences before too long. When they performed in London, "it was like someone took a fire hose full of Ecstasy and doused the crowd," Matronic says. "I'm surprised people weren't hurling themselves off the balcony," Shears marvels. "I've never seen such a wall of bliss."