Once upon a time about three years or so ago, after The Strokes et al had stirred up renewed interest in guitar music and revived a trend for band names prefixed by 'the', four skinny boys who met through a combination of college and far from 22 grand jobs in The Virgin Mega store joked that if they formed a band they'd be callled The Rakes. Eventually they did just that. Much cheap lager and heavy nights playing gigs across london's various indie venues, and heavier nights on tour with Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and The Buzzcocks later, they are currently working on their second album.

The Rakes are influenced by "the regular stuff that all skinny pale blokes in bands like" plus a variety of others such as The Go Team, Statik, Dizzy Rascal, Tosca etc and make intelligent art-punk type music for skinny pale indie kids to jump up and down/ toss their heand insouciantly to on the dance floor/ drink red stripe too (now that 2-1 Le Coq is no more).

The Rakes are
Alan: Vocals
Jamie: Bass
Lasse: Drums
Matthew: Guitar and Vocals