By George Chen

XIU XIU'S JAMIE Stewart finds it terribly funny that I went to see Kurt Cobain's house in Seattle. I find it funny that someone so willing to talk about suicide and death in his songs cracks up at my deferential fanboy morbidity. I don't get a chance to ask him what he thinks of Cobain and Seattle, where Stewart recently moved, because he happens to be on the phone with his girlfriend as we are leaving Lake Washington. He's on a national tour with Devendra Banhart and has called her three times already today – this is the person for whom, he says, "I wrote the first love song I ever wrote in my life, like, a sincere love song."

It's the only song in the entire Xiu Xiu songbook that he considers "happy."

There are those who would say that Xiu Xiu is self-indulgent, that as a singer, Stewart is whiny. Just listening to 2001's Knifeplay or this spring's A Promise (both on 5 Rue Christine) would make you have to agree, but there is a further step to take. Xiu Xiu demands more of a listener – it needs a partnership, full participation, to make sense. If you were from San Jose, you'd understand.

My friend Marcy asked me to be in a Xiu Xiu video she was making for a forthcoming DVD. It was going to take place at a beach, and I was supposed to show up wearing black and looking sullen. This was per Stewart's instructions that the video be "depressing and not goofy." When I ask him about this, he says it's because too many of the videos they've already made, most done by former Xiu Xiu member and animator-cartoonist Lauren Andrews, a.k.a. Dr. Troll, are goofy enough. (Disclosure: my sister, Yvonne, was also in Xiu Xiu until the last album. She appears in one of these videos doing some sort of choreographed dance in a gym, so I cannot possibly embarrass her further.)

Of course, the world has not yet seen these videos. To the cloistered indie rock world, Xiu Xiu is a black box, a mysterious chain-yanker or a reminder that they once listened to those dandiest of misanthropes, the yet-to-be-revisionist-approved Smiths.

"The big inspiration for me is Smiths songs," Stewart admits. "Smiths songs are really sad but really funny. I'm not even an ironic Smiths fan – the Smiths are my favorite band, and I think Morrissey says some hilarious shit trying to say very heartfelt stuff. I'm not going for laughs – life is a bitch, and life totally sucks, and sometimes it's how much it sucks that's funny."

Xiu Xiu makes people uncomfortable because it refuses to let you put up an arm's-length parameter, getting so far into your face and guts that you lose the option of withdrawal. In fact, Stewart named his latest acoustic EP Fag Patrol (Free Porcupine Society).

"I wouldn't necessarily say it's a joke, but there's a sense of uncomfortable humor behind it, and it's also very, very serious," he says.

I ask him about cultural appropriation in Xiu Xiu, a band that is now stripped down to Stewart solo, with occasional input from producer and arranger Cory McCulloch. "Any sort of cultural appropriation as a joke, I think, is lame," he says. "I don't want to come off like a total queer poster boy, but I am bi, so I do have a slight bit of claim on getting to say 'fag patrol,' just because it's funny to say, and also to use it as something serious. If I was straight, I probably wouldn't, just 'cause I'm superuptight and p.c.... I don't even know if it's cool to be queer and say shit like that, though. Part of that title is fucking with that, trying to understand whether or not it's really appropriate."

If you were saddled with the burden of being the freak drama queen of indie rock – and if you could still try to make someone feel like he or she was not alone and not a horrible person – then you could be Xiu Xiu or one of its fans. It might seem ironic that Stewart could reassure anyone about their own sanity, but there you have it – like all things Xiu Xiu, it is something that shouldn't work but somehow does.

It's easy to smirk at the dramatic personae, but the salvation of this group, named after "the most depressing movie ever," according to Stewart, is its commitment to honesty. Stewart's example of baring it all for art becomes more convincing the further we get off the irony meter.