Samir Khan, singer and bassist of Kepler, has endured his fair share of band member changes, including the departure of Jeremy Gara, who is now the drummer of The Arcade Fire. But despite the player shifts, especially since the release of their last album, the critically acclaimed Missionless Days, Kepler is more solid than ever. With two new members and an album release set for this summer, this Ottawa-originated band has a lot to be excited about. Khan spoke to Erin Letson over the phone from Toronto.

YOU LIVE IN TORONTO, BUT THE REST OF YOUR BAND IS KIND OF SPREAD OUT. HOW DOES THAT WORK OUT?
We try to get together once or twice a month. Some of us have been playing with each other long enough that we can figure out stuff really quickly and we work really well together. There's a whole back history of this band, this is like the fourth version of it. But I live in Toronto, three guys live in Ottawa and one guy lives in Montreal.

SO, WHAT'S KEPLER'S PLAYING SCHEDULE LIKE AT THE MOMENT? ARE YOU GUYS GETTING A LOT OF SHOWS?
We're hopefully going to have our record come out in June or July'¦or August this year. So we're just doing a couple of shows. We have a few new guys who joined the band, Mike and Jordy, so we're just getting a few shows here and there and playing with them and having fun.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE KEPLER'S STYLE?
Oh man. Uhh'¦I guess I should start thinking about answering this question if we've got a record coming out. We used to be really slow and depressing and now we're hopefully faster but'¦I don't know. You know what, I'll ask somebody to describe us and I'll send it to you. I don't want to sound like I'm pretending we're in the most original rock band in the world.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR GOALS FOR THE REST OF 2005?
We should all probably start working out, quitting smoking'¦really, just putting out our record. I mean, we've been sitting on this thing for, like, a year and we've been giving it to friends and people have been saying really encouraging things about it. But, for whatever reason, it just hasn't come out yet so I just want it to come out and then we'll do whatever it makes sense for us to do. We're all approaching 30 and we can't really jump in vans like we used to. We actually don't have a van anymore'¦we have a band but we have no van.

SO YOUR WEB SITE SAYS THAT KEPLER IS A FIVE-PIECE BAND WHO WILL NEVER BREAK UP. ARE YOU STILL CONFIDENT IN THAT AFTER ALL THE CHANGES?
Yes. We can't, because if it does I'll go crazy. And I don't think any of those guys want me to go crazy. Or anybody else around me.

WHAT DOES THE PHRASE '˜KEPLER IS WORKING TO RULE' MEAN?
I get these industry emails about how to build a band website'”and I just think that the whole paradigm of what rock bands trying to get noticed by doing all the rights things'”we tried that and it's just not working. So we decided to go on strike and our original design of our website was just the picture of the smoking clown and a link to an MP3. And it had no information about us, it just had random, like, whatever. And now we're working to rule'¦and that means we're somehow deluding ourselves to think that we're in the driver's seat.

WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO PLAY WAVELENGTH?
Well, I've known Jonny Dovercourt for years and he booked the first show I ever played in Toronto and several others along the way. And we played Wavelength before when our last record came out. Jonny's just one of those guys I've known for a long time so I just wrote him and said, '˜Can we play a show?' and he said, 'œThis is probably the last show I'm going to be booking for Wavelength,'? and so I said, 'œOkay.'? And that's how it happened.

By Erin Letson