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Cleveland teenager Dylan Baldi is the man behind Cloud Nothings, a much blogged about creation with a growing fan-base on both sides of the pond. He makes short musical blasts of genius that will have you jumping around like a child on a sugar high. A youthfull carefree attitude permeates his material, yet he maintains the drive and focus to garner critical acclaim. The full-of-beans liveliness this 19-year-old embodies has already seen the release of one disc last October, while the full-length self-titled debut is available from Monday.

Baldi's story is the stuff dreams are made of. He Spent bored days setting up fake myspace accounts with hastily made pseudonymns and then posting tracks to each. residing in the basement while living at home with his parents, he created lo-fi songs with whatever equipment was available. These rough-edged tracks took off due to their reliance on well crafted hooks and uncomplicated melodies.

With praise coming from all quarters, Baldi had to decide whether to follow his passion for music or stay in school. Needless to say, he quickly opted to form a band with fellow class-mates. On tour the vibrance and passion for their craft the band display is unbridled. Baldi leads the way with his rasping vocal intensity, while the drummer could easily be mistaken for an octopus as arms flail everywhere enthusiastically.

The new record has provided an opportunity to use a full studio facility. The DIY aesthetic of previous package, Turning On, makes way for a polished sound, capturing the clarity of recent live performances. When describing the debut Baldi gave what has to be one of the best quotes in recent years. "I think it's good so if other people think it's good, then that's good," he said modestly. Read on to find out what makes Cloud Nothings so good...

It must be great to take to the stage with a band behind you considering you originally made the songs and played all the parts yourself.
DB: Yeah that's true. It's way easier to make everything more dynamic and to change things on the fly and I definitely like adding that to the live performance.

Q:Your drummer seems to steal the live show though. His head could have hit cymbals if you'd have needed.
Yeah he's very dynamic (laughs), can even play with his head, that's why I like him. He's a really good drummer and I didn't even know. When I went to find friends and ask them if they wanted to join the band I knew that he played the drums a little but I'd never seen him play and as soon as the first practice came around it was just like 'what is he doing?' This makes the band like 20 times better.

Q:You all seem very energetic and the music has that youthful spirit within it.
DB:Great. I'm glad it comes across that way. We just try to have fun and not really think about anything too much but it's great to see people connect with the music.

Q:Where did you find the rest of the band?
DB: I was a bassist in another band with PJ who introduced me to Joe, who plays guitar and he also knew our drummer Jason so it was just people I knew from hanging out in Cleveland, going to shows and stuff.

Q:When did you become interested in music?
DB:I took piano lessons when I was little but as far as actually recording rock music I probably started learning guitar in 7th grade when I was about 13 or 14 and then after a while I kind of realised, wow, I can make songs now. I still play piano and I play a lot of other instruments but the guitar has probably become the main one for me. All the music I listened to at the time was guitar centric. I was listening to a lot of what my parents had when I was in 7th grade, like The Beatles and Elvis Costello. I only had a piano at that time and as soon as I got the guitar I was set free to play what they were playing and realised that I could do it too.

Q: The initial release, Turning On, (a collection of previous singles and rare sought after tracks) was quite lo-fi. Was that something you intended or was that simply because you were restrained by the equipment that was available to you?
DB:It's pretty much the way things ended up sounding because of the way things were and what I had. I like the way it sounds. I'm happy with it but if I had been able at the time to go to a studio and record those songs with a band or something I would have done that. I just did the best that I could with what I had.

Q:You certainly got people's attention despite the limitations.
DB: Yeah I wasn't expecting anything. I used to make myspace pages for fake bands and record the instruments for them. That was one of the main ways I spent my time and I'd just put like two songs on there and then sit back and think, well I did that today (laughs), but that's what happened here too. I put up Hey Cool Kids and Whaddya Wanna Know. I just recorded those some day like a year ago and added a few random bands that I liked the sound of. So it was really weird to get a reaction.

Q:Were you ready for everything that was about to happen?
DB: I wasn't ready for it right away but I scrambled it all together pretty quickly. I still had school and I didn't really have the time to balance both of those. I wanted to take music seriously so I had to find a band and leave school for a little bit which everyone felt was a good idea.

Q: What kind of kid were you in school?
DB:I did good. I was a good kid. Hey Cool Kid certainly wasn't written out of personal experience. It's not about me.

Q:Where did the Daft Punk tin-foil robotics idea come from for the video to it?
DB:That was all the director Alan Cordell. I'd seen a video he'd done for Beach House with someone ripping out their stomach at the end of it and eating it or something weird like that so I instantly thought that's pretty cool. He directed and I had no idea what he was going to do and that came out of it which was pretty great.

Q:What excites you lyrically? Are lyrics integral to your songs?
DB Lyrics are usually the last thing I worry about. The melody is important but attaching words to it isn't really the most important thing to me. A lot of the words come from really trivial weird things like scenarios that I just make up or sometimes I do something really pathetic. I'll pick a random wikipedia page about a person and just write a song about that person. (laughs)

Q: So which people have featured inadvertently?
DB:It's not even normal people. There's a thing of wikipedia you can go on and just search for people born in literally any year and it just gives you a huge list of absolute nobodies. It'd be like somebody writing an article about my dad. He's a school teacher in Cleveland and he has been for 30 years but he's not a big deal. He is to some people but to the world at large he's not an important person. I wrote one about an old baseball player.

Q: This time you have the studio facilities at your disposal. That's definitely going to shape the sound of the album.
DB: Yes I'm definitely taking advantage of the studio and also the fact that my songwriting has improved. It sounds a lot more like our live shows have been doing because it's more energetic. All the songs are faster and because of the studio they sound better. My favourite records are ones where the actual records don't sound good but they still have really good songs and keep all the energy in them so I didn't want to lose that intensity either.

Q:How much time did you have to get the record together?
DB:I was in Baltimore recording it for a week and a half

Q: So the writing was as energetic as the songs proved to be.
DB: Yes it seems to be really easy for me at the moment to find a hook or a melody. So much so that for the next album I think I want to make things a lot different.

Q: Are you ready for everyone to hear the album?
DB:Yes I am. This album is good and so if other people think it's good then that's good (laughs).

Q:That's definitely the quote of the piece.
DB:I think it's good so if other people think it's good, good (laughs). That's going to make me look so smart. Oh my god.

Q: Were there any pressures with this album as it's not as care-free as making one in your bedroom.
DB:Yes definitely. I had a couple of albums worth of material which I thought I could use but then I would listen to it the next day and just think I hate all these songs. Finally I just realised I have to take five and record them for real. So there was some kind of pressure there obviously yes but it's a lot of fun.

Q:What about the tracks you made when you were 13? Have you ever thought about resurrecting some of those?
DB:Those are pretty bad (laughs). If you want to hear them then you can but they're pretty bad. I have a book of lyrics actually that I found recently. One of the songs I wrote around the time had a chorus like this, 'I'm in a car with my dad, and we're driving too fast,' and I've just written it over and over (laughs). I don't think I would ever make anyone suffer by playing them that song.

5:36 AM | 21/01/2011