The Fieros

Dallas Observer
Best Indie 2007
Sigh...when is the music world gonna retire the term "indie"? Its meaning has been through so many incarnations, who the hell knows what it signifies?
For the sake of argument, let's set down a general definition. If indie means independent in spirit; if indie means celebrating the legends of the past who cared not a whit about smashing drum kits or slurring sexily into a mic or wearing tight pants; if indie means rocking roller-coaster Britpop melodies, drifting up and down over guitars that sound like the Beatles through the Smiths through the Stone Roses through the streets of Deep Ellum, then the Fieros are certainly the Best Indie band in the 'plex. With their revved-up garage dance pop and bangs-in-the-face aesthetic, this is a crew that brings a touch of Manchester, Soho (both London and New York) and the Lower East Side to our fair part of the world. Had they been born in another place at another time, there's no doubt Factory Records' Tony Wilson and 4AD's Ivo Watts Russell would have had a fistfight over their collective soul. And no matter who won, the Fieros would have told them to piss off.
—Jonana Widner - Dallas Observer

There are two stories about how the Fieros were founded. One, singer-guitarist Joey McClellan shares while dining at Chili's: "We just started this up," he says, shyly. "We've always been doing this."

That version has an incredible lack of rock to it, especially considering the Fieros' unabashed '60s garage sound. A better story is the flaming pie-esque fable they tell on their MySpace page, involving four little boys in 1959 and a strange man in black with a bottle of Jack Daniel's. The kids, hopped up on the Jack, find "shovels made of magic" with which the quartet begins to "dig for sound" in a church playground. Unearthed are a bass for Aaron McClellan, guitars for his brother Joey and Chris Holston and a drum kit for Austen Hooks. Behold: the Fieros.

Magically fast-forward to 2006. The boys have a knack for producing raw, hard-rocking, foot-stomping songs without falling into the Strokes/Hives retro-rock trap. It's no shock that they say their main influences are the Beatles and the Stones, but unlike the bajillions of other bands with the same claim, the Fieros pay as much attention to vocal harmonies as they do their guitar lines. But if chuggy guitar rock with droning harmonies and unfiltered drums isn't your thing, the Fieros say they have lots more going for them...like the fact that drummer Austen looks like Chuck Norris and bassist Aaron has a third nipple. (Really, it's directly below his right one.) God bless a Dallas band that doesn't take itself too seriously. "There's no pretentiousness in our band," says Joey. "We're just writing songs that we like, and we're getting to share it."
—Andrea Grimes
- Dallas Observer