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Introducing Uh Huh Her

Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey, members of the Los Angeles-based musical duo Uh Huh Her, seem to get along as mellifluously as their voices blend. Throughout our interview, they often finished each other’s sentences and kept up a frisky banter as they talked about their debut EP, I See Red, which will be released tomorrow digitally.

“Indie electro-pop” is how they describe their sound. “That’s [it] in a nutshell,” Grey said, “but I think it’s a lot more involved than that. Then again, I don’t know that we have a specific sound. We try to be all-encompassing or something. Whatever. I just had a bunch of sake.”

Hailey promptly steered things back on track: “And it’s going to evolve. This is just the beginning of what we’ll do together, I’m sure.”

I See Red was produced by Grey and recorded primarily in a bedroom at her Los Angeles home. The ethereal vocals were recorded in the bathroom, Hailey pointed out. A limited number of physical copies of Uh Huh Her’s five-track EP will also be available soon, and listeners will be able to snag a bonus track, “Mystery Lights,” on the band’s website tomorrow and iTunes in the coming weeks.

For Hailey, the EP marks a return to making music after a five-year hiatus. In the ’90s, she was one half of the alt-pop band the Murmurs, which released four albums and then later reformed as Gush. That gig ended once Hailey began her ongoing role as Alice Pieszecki, possibly the most popular character on The L Word.

How does it feel to be back? “Amazing,” Hailey said. “I knew that I missed it, but I didn’t know how badly, so it’s been really, really fun for me to get back into it.”

She copped to a slight case of stage fright, though: “I’m nervous about performing live, which is my favorite thing to do on earth, so it’s weird. It’s just because I haven’t done it in so long. I’m sure once the first show is over, it’ll be fine.”

Grey was a member of the lo-fi rock band Mellowdrone and has also played bass and keyboards for Dr. Dre, Busta Rhymes, Melissa Auf der Maur and Kelly Osbourne. She said she’s also got some jitters: “I’m always shy. But I’m so used to being a bass player or a synth player that performing is really fun, because there’s no pressure. But now the pressure’s on.”

Mostly, Grey is excited to leave session work behind and write, record and produce her own material. “I’ve been working on my solo stuff for years; I just never released it,” she said. “And I’ve done production before, but it was so much fun to be able to do it and let it see the light of day. It’s very exciting.” These days Hailey and Grey are getting ready for a free, all-ages “fan appreciation” show on Aug. 19 at the Los Angeles offices for their record label, Nettwerk, which has a large stage set up for live shows. “You don’t have to worry about being of age, and you don’t have to worry about buying tickets,” said Grey. “It’s just kind of a place where everyone can come on a Sunday and hang out and listen to cool s—. I don’t know. [Laughs.] We’re just trying to get bodies in there.”

Uh Huh Her are also working on material for their first full-length album, which is slated to drop in March 2008. They plan on recording songs and playing clubs in October after filming wraps for The L Word.

For now, they squeeze in time to write and rehearse amid Hailey’s filming schedule. The show is shot in Vancouver, but Hailey flies home almost every weekend. “I’m a little jetsetter,” she said over the phone from her house in Los Angeles a few days before returning to Vancouver.

“Cam and I have been seeing a lot of each other and doing what we can when we’re alone and what we can when we’re together. It’s hard, because we have a lot to do. We have to work on our live show; we have an album to write. So when we see each other on the weekends it’s like, OK, what should we do? What should we concentrate on?”

Both women have been logging a lot of air miles. Grey has been flying up to Vancouver and staying with Hailey. “That’s been really fun – more fun than work,” Hailey said.

Ziptrekking in Whistler is just one example of the antics these two have been up to in British Columbia. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the participant straps into a harness and glides along steel “zip lines” suspended over the tree tops, high above a white-water river. L Word viewers may recall Hailey’s character Alice taking part in the activity along with the officiant for Shane and Carmen’s wedding in the Season 3 finale.

Hailey and Grey have also enjoyed cramming together onto Hailey’s one-person electric bike and riding through the city streets.

“It’s so much fun,” said Hailey. “You can really only do something like that in a place like Vancouver. You could never do that in L.A. So we geeked out on that. It was like Dumb and Dumber.”

Grey elaborated: “It goes probably 10 miles per hour, so you can imagine both of us on this little bike in the middle of traffic, people honking at us. We’d ride to our manager’s office on it, pull up, and they’d be like, ‘What the hell are you guys doing?'”

“I’d had it a while but I’d never experienced it in that way before,” Hailey said.

The two first met a year ago after one of Grey’s shows with Mellowdrone, and they began working together this past January. They could tell immediately that they’d make a good team.

“To begin with, we had a really good time together, and that certainly helps,” Hailey said. “You have to really like each other if you’re going to start a band. Ideas started coming together really well, and then when we sang together it was like, oh wow, this is cool. Our voices really complement each other.”

Their collaboration is pretty fluid, according to Hailey: “It just sort of comes as it comes. There’s no system or formula to it.”

Both band members contribute bits of material that they then work on together. It’s a new type of process for Grey, who is used to working either alone or on a for-hire basis. “This is the first time I’ve worked with somebody else in that kind of collaborative way where it’s equal,” Grey said. “So this is great, bouncing it off somebody who’s an equal partner in it all. It’s definitely a different process for me. I like it. It’s much better, in fact, with another brain involved.”

Hailey immediately piped up: “A very large one, I’d like to add.”

Together their brains settled on a band name inspired by P.J. Harvey. “It’s a song that [Harvey’s] had for a long time, a B-side that didn’t end up making the record,” Grey explained. “I’ve always liked the name of that song, and then coming across it again later and deciding, oh wow, it’s a great name for a band.” Halfway through the interview, throughout which she was mostly audible, Grey suddenly said, “Sorry. Can you even hear me? I’m pointing the phone down.”

“Cam mumbles,” Hailey said.

“I tend to mumble,” Grey confirmed. “She calls me Droopy. That’s her nickname for me.”

“It fits so well,” Hailey said.

“We’re not talking about the obvious,” Grey quipped. “They’re not quite there yet.”

Grey then joked that her nickname for Hailey is simply Number One, ever since Hailey topped the AfterEllen.com Hot 100. When asked to vouch for whether Hailey has kept up her hotness as promised, Grey confirmed that Hailey is “ridiculously hot.”

Hailey then deadpanned, “Oh yeah, if you could see me right now.”

Originally, Uh Huh Her included a third member, Alicia Warrington, on drums. She can be heard on I See Red and seen in a video on the band’s website. But Warrington left the band in May to pursue other musical opportunities.

It was an amicable parting, as Hailey explained: “We’re a new band, and it’s risky to do something like this. She’s also a hired musician, and she plays with a lot of people and gets hired to go on tours and make money. And right now we’re just like a baby band. You sort of have to weigh out your lifestyle — or risking your lifestyle. She’s great. There’s no hard feelings or anything. She’s just going along her path.”

So for now Uh Huh Her lives on as a duo, with both members lending their vocal and instrumental talents. At their live shows, they plan on playing dueling keyboards and dueling basses. But they also plan on expanding the band in the future.

“It’s definitely not going to just be a duo,” Hailey said. “We’re going to get more band members. I don’t know if it’ll just be one or two or what it’ll end up being. It’s just this for now. Temporary.”

The band likely won’t lack for would-be new members, given Hailey’s television fame. Grey is grateful for her bandmate’s fan base. “It’s great, because everyone loves her so much,” she said. “Without it, not a lot of people know who I am, because I’m always doing these weird projects and I’m always in the background, so to have that is very, very good.”

Hailey said she’s excited for Grey to get more exposure: “I think at this point people know about me, but I just know that when they hear Cam sing and see her and all that, they’re going to be super fans of hers. I’m a fan.”

The women certainly hope their appeal will reach beyond Hailey’s L Word notoriety. “We feel lucky that we have people that are even paying attention to us at all,” Hailey offered. “So, in that sense, it’s fantastic. That’s not where we want it to start and end. Obviously, we want people beyond the show to know about us. We’re so grateful and happy that people even know about us at all.”

At that point, Grey said something unintelligible, and I asked for clarification.

“Yeah, if I only knew,” Hailey said dryly. “I can’t understand her.”

For more on Uh Huh Her, visit uhhuhher.com or myspace.com/uhhuhhermusic.

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