Led by Tasso—who refers to herself as a “Chilean girl playing a Canadian guitar”—The May Fire is a relentlessly D.I.Y. act that mixes influences from three different countries (co-guitarist Nachito and drummer El Pipe are Columbian, and bassist Rob Gwin hails from Connecticut). The band can shift from grunge to indie to calculated and quirky, and then toss in a tune sung in Spanish just to keep listeners even more off balance.

Formed in 2004 in Los Angeles, the group departed to San Francisco within a year, and released its debut album, Right and Wrong, in 2006. The May Fire is currently assembling a trilogy of EPs. The first, Plastic Army, hit the streets last year, and the second in the series, La Victoria [Rock Whores Recordings], is out now.

How were you first exposed to music?
In Chile, I would stay up late with my parents, and listen to opera, as well as boleros and tangos from Argentina. My mom taught me a little Spanish riff on the guitar when I was 12, but I mostly studied classical piano. I quit piano because I didn’t like to practice, and I picked up the guitar again after somebody mysteriously left some old guitar lesson books in my mailbox.

Did those early musical experiences ultimately inform your guitar style?
My style is messy and raw. It’s decent by accident. It developed through time as I tried to figure out why my power chords weren’t cool. There’s nothing too complicated about power chords, but I discovered that you need to have a special mojo when you play them. When I heard David Gilmour on Pink Floyd’s Animals, my mind understood life in a completely different way. I think maybe he brainwashed me. In the May Fire, I typically play the body of the song and the riffs, and Nachito dresses things up with his solos and tones. He can play with a lot of precision, but he can also be strange and moody.

What type of gear are you using?
My main and favorite guitar for live shows is an Eastwood Airline 2P DLX. It can be sweet and mean, and it’s the best for power chords because it retains definition when I crank up the drive. I also play a Rickenbacker 360, which sounds very warm and deep, but, again, with very clear definition. It’s good for singing sweet songs. My stage amp is a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, and I use a small Fender Champion 600 amp for writing. We also have a ’70s silverface Twin Reverb in our studio. For effects, I love these RZ pedals that a friend from Colombia, Rafael Zuleta, makes. The Violator is a kind of Vox Tone Bender replica, and the fuzz is similar to a ProCo Rat. These are purely studio pieces, because they are demons! Their wildness makes them crazy and great, but they’re hard to control, and too unpredictable to use live. So, onstage, I use a good old Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, an Ibanez Tube Screamer, and an MXR Micro Amp.

It’s interesting that some of your punk-oriented songs have a Latin feel. How did you develop that hybrid?
When I got a little older, I started to love and appreciate Spanish boleros. The riffs are so fast! You have to develop some serious speed to play them. At some point, I just started observing structural similarities between boleros and the songs I was writing. The bolero formula begins with a melodic riff, and progresses to chords—power chords, by the way—and then the intro melody is sung over the chord progression. Like any driving music you can dance to, you can never, ever drop the beat. A bolero’s groove drives very much like a punk song, so it was kind of easy slipping a bolero feel into a punk tune. Most of our songs are simple, but it’s the structure and the intensity that makes them different. El Pipe and I started this band together, so we have a special songwriting bond. It’s the combination of a lollipop and a shot of bourbon.