Recently, we sat down with Tom Oakes (guitar/vocals), one of the five cuties who make up the band, and here's what he has to say for himself -- and The Higher.

Teenmag: How'd you guys get started?
Tom: Well, actually, they started about six months to a year before I joined the band about five-and-a-half years ago. They were all in the same high school. Our bass player found our singer and our drummer and our old guitar player, and they just started jamming around. The singer has actually been my best friend since third grade. I was in another band and he was like, "Hey, you should join our band." I don't know how to sing, and I was singing in my old band, so that sounded like the best idea I'd ever heard. I joined and we started writing songs, and we were 16 or 17 years old and it was so much fun. The next thing you know, it's 2007, five years later, and we're still a band.

Teenmag: Tell me about the guys in the band.
Tom: We'll, we've got Pat, the drummer. He's more of the quiet one, but once you get to know him he's a really outgoing guy. He plays video games like crazy. That kid brings his Xbox on tour. Face is the bass player, and he's also a video game dork. He's Mr. Happy. He always looks in the mirror and makes this fish face. Reggie's a guitar player and he's all-around goofy. He loves Italian food and he's always making us laugh. Seth is the singer. He's the nice kid that everyone loves because he's got a great voice. We've been friends forever. And then there's me. I guess me and Reggie both hold the goofball title. I wear a lot of bright colors and I hang out and play guitar. I love to joke around and have a good sense of humor with everyone.

Teenmag: What was the experience of recording the album like?
Tom: It was awesome. We had two-and-a-half months to do it. We had an apartment in Beverly Hills, which was cool because it was sophisticated and we're just a bunch of geeks from Vegas. The studio was really close, and we got to take our time and work on all the songs and make sure it all turned out the way we wanted it to. Our producer, Mike Green, was really relaxed and laid-back, and we got to experiment with all kinds of sounds. The only thing I didn't like was all the traffic in Los Angeles. I hate traffic. But we got to have a lot of fun and eat good food and hang out in the summertime in Los Angeles.

Teenmag: You guys are part of the AOL Breakers competition; how's that going?
Tom: It's going good. We're winning right now. It's scary because the Jonas Brothers are giant in the teen world and they have a lot of hard-core fans that don't take anything. So it's amazing that we're in a contest with such amazing bands. Paramore is really great, we saw them play the other night. It's really flattering that kids are voting so much. We've never really had a great break, but if we won this it'd be awesome for us.

Hear that, girls? Click on over to The Higher's MySpace page to learn more and, hey, to vote!