THEY formed around the time the Eraserheads disbanded. Thus, they christened themselves after one of Ely’s female characters.

Ang Bandang Shirley, however, is no E-Heads tribute band. They were brought together by a common love for Canadian indie supergroup Broken Social Scene.

But they do love Ely, Marcus, Buddy and Raimund.

In MySpace, they likened themselves to BSS “if they listened to the E-Heads, a happier Jeff Buckley with Dong Abay’s street smarts, Sugarfree’s heart inside the baby of Radiohead and Feist.”

They do channel that BSS spirit and vibe. Fortunately for us, though, not all eight of them came to our acoustic session or else we would have been scratching our heads figuring out how to fit them in our tiny studio.

Here’s Owel, Selena, Ean and Joe singing a few songs from their recently-released album “Themesongs”

Check out more stuff about the band (including Ean jamming with +/- (Plus/Minus)) on their Multiply page. Also, here’s the video for the first single off the album “Themesong”.