We got the Heat! Whirlwind Heat have been called a modern-day Devo thanks to their jerky rhythms, abstract thinking and keyboards galore.

Misery and oddity both love company, so it's little surprise that one of Rock's most oddly constructed current sensations would be mentoring a band with an equally odd lineup and sonic fingerprint. It's been four years now since the members of Whirlwind Heat played a star-crossed date at Detroit's Magic Stick that led to their meeting with the White Stripes' Jack White.

Of course, the band -- keyboardist/vocalist David Swanson, bassist Steve Damstra, drummer Brad Holland -- was slightly more conventional then, with the presence of guitarist Jason Eberspeaker. But the quartet still exuded a quirky energy that attracted White's ear and inspired him to offer his services as producer.

Other than a brief stint early on as a standard guitar/bass/drums Rock trio, there's very little in the way of conventionality cluttering Whirlwind Heat's resume. The band was forged just north of Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1996 when Swanson, Damstra and Holland -- all 16 years old and friends since fourth grade -- decided to make some musical noise in the manner of inspirations like Mudhoney and The Melvins.

Christening themselves after the Raymond Pettibone illustration on the cover of Sonic Youth's Goo album, the teenage trio bashed out competent Rock for the better part of a year before Swanson acquired a Moog synthesizer and switched over to keyboards for a 1997 opening gig for Arab on Radar at a Grand Rapids art gallery. Out of Swanson's experimentation with his new toy came much of Whirlwind Heat's eventual jerky, Devo-inflected Noise Pop sound.

At an age when most teenagers are looking for summer jobs and just hanging out, Whirlwind Heat decided to hit the road and follow Arab on Radar around the country as a possible opening act. The possibility came with the fact that the trio was not actually "on tour" with AOR.

"We were sick of playing Grand Rapids and nobody would respond when we'd try to set up shows because they didn't know who we were," Damstra says with a laugh. "We found out (AOR's) route and then just showed up and asked the club promoters if we could play. I think there were 10 shows, and eight of the 10 we made it on, so it worked out pretty good. We didn't make any money, but it was our first tour and it was crazy."

Whirlwind Heat's watershed year was 1999, when they added Eberspeaker on guitar and released a local single ("Whirlwind Heat"/"Mechanik"). The band started playing Detroit more frequently. A show at the Gold Dollar was seen by Italy Records owner Dave Buick, who wanted to release a single with the band, and the Magic Stick date a few months later resulted in the production offer from White.

"He saw us and was into it and asked if we wanted to record at his house for the Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit comp," Damstra says. "We did that and stayed in touch, recorded with him again and just became good friends. Then we started opening shows for the White Stripes. It just worked out great."

With White's studio assistance, Whirlwind Heat did several sessions that resulted in the three-song Glaxefusion EP and the track "Decal on My Sticker" for the 2001 SSOD compilation. Shortly thereafter, Eberspeaker dropped out of the band to pursue his fine art studies (his artwork graces the cover of Glaxefusion) and Whirlwind Heat was back to a trio, although the makeup was now keys/bass/drums.

"Once our guitar player quit, we didn't want to add it again because we didn't want to deal with somebody else, and we didn't want David to be strapped down with a guitar," Damstra says. "He was free to do more things. It made it simpler, just bass and drums and keyboards. That's where we really figured our sound out, because we liked doing it that way. It evolved out of randomness."

After more regional touring and a honing of their Post-Punk/New Wave synth style, White offered the band a contract with his new Third Man imprint through V2 Records. Whirlwind Heat decamped last summer to singer/songwriter Brendan Benson's home studio in Detroit, where White produced the band's debut full length release, Do Rabbits Wonder?, consisting of 13 tracks all named after colors having little to do with the song's content ("Orange," "Black," "Purple," "Tan," etc.).

Do Rabbits Wonder? is a marvel of spiky synth spasms and melodic dissonance over a punchy and fluid rhythm section, liberally coated with Swanson's spoken/warbled/howled vocals, all of which is influenced by the band's Grunge roots as well as later inputs such as Devo, Brian Eno and the Modern Lovers. Since producing the album and taking Whirlwind Heat out as the White Stripes' opening act, White has stated that the Heat is as close as this generation is likely to come to Devo. Damstra is flattered to consternation.

"I don't know what to say about that ... Devo's a really great band," Damstra says. "That's a huge compliment. I hope we can live up to something like that. We have the drive for it. We never thought we'd be doing anything like this, playing the shows that we have or even playing out of state and seeing the world. It's insane."