In five years half of all the world's indie bands will sound like Rats With Wings.
In ten years the market will be completely saturated with Rats With Wings copy bands. In fifteen years Rats With Wings will be all but forgotten.
In twenty years it will all begin again.

Brendan Fitzpatrick and David "Professor Fingers" Hurtgen have been writing and performing together for 15 years. Their collaboration began with the Rochester-based band Johnny Boomslang in 1991. For 6 years they sloshed through hell until beaten, broken, and penniless, they went their separate ways. Fitzpatrick would soon join his cousin Peter Fitzpatrick (Clem Snide,The Pee Wee Fist) to assume full-time duty as bassist for the Brooklyn indie sensation Clem Snide. Meanwhile Hurtgen formed the short-lived but now legendary performance art trio Bitchmidget.

2003 found the boys reunited in Brooklyn, and when Rats With Wings was formed in the spring of 2005, they vowed to not give up until one of them dropped or could no longer hold their axe. After much experimentation, they arrived at the instrumentation of voice and guitar (Fitzpatrick) and keyboards triggering laptop generated sounds (Hurtgen). After performing small gigs as a duo for about a year, often playing to a sequenced drumbeat, they decided to add real drums in the form of Colin Brooks of The Stills. Currently they are performing with former Johnny Boomslang drummer Jeff Thompson.

Like all good popular music, their songs begin with great melodies and lyrics, written by Fitzpatrick. Once the basic tune is complete, Hurtgen takes over as arranger/orchestrator, crafting a quirky catalogue of diverse sounds - and not the trendy kind. The band's signature is its schizoid combination of irreverence and serious pop songwriting. Consider this analogy to describe their sound: The Flaming Lips and Wilco are in a horrible car crash, and Ween shows up in an ambulance to clean up the mess. One can hardly know what to expect at a live performance, though Bible verses with James Brown style "hits" aren't out of the question. Though these boys don't take themselves too seriously, one listen to these meticulously crafted pop melodies, droll lyrics and detailed arrangements and it's clear that this is anything but a novelty act.

Rats With Wings released the "Tiny Guns EP" in fall of '07 and two of the songs featured on their self-titled debut, "Cocaine Vs. Pot and Beer" and "Don't Melt" were released previously on the soundtrack of the IFC film "The Baxter" starring Michael Showalter and Michelle Williams.

Rats With Wings new self-titled cd will be released in Spring 2008.

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