As a child, Adam Green loved mathematics. In his teens, he became interested in the occult, particularly Satanism. At the age of 19, he became acquainted with a volunteer minister named Eldar who took him under his wing. Eldar, who was an alchemist in many ways, asked Geoff Travis(the owner of Rough Trade Records) to provide him with funding to put together a hard hitting Satanist boy/girl group. Travis, already impressed with Eldar’s success with The Strokes, was all too eager to dish out the cash. Now that the money was coming in, Eldar began to form the band. He teamed Green up with Kimya Dawson. As a child Kimya sang her devil music to the good catholic kids in school, but her only previous experience in the "business" was singing subliminal satanic backup vocals for young Hellraisers Ben Kweller and the Bay Area Bad Boys known more commonly as Third Eye Blind.

After teaching Adam and Kimya the songs, Eldar brought in four new musicians to add textures and to fill out the sound. Most of them were exotic male models who had recently left their agencies. With the exception of Jack Dishel, Strictly Beats, Toby Goodshank, and Steven Mertens, none of them had ever played musical instruments before, especially Steven. Jack, known mostly for his tender listmaking, was also trained in quantum-enthusiasm and was called away from his vittles ranch in NYC to gently play sweetly with the band. Beats, responsible for the "I'm with stupid--->" shirts, and Mertens, responsible for the "