!!!

Biography

!!! (generally pronounced “chk chk chk”) is a dance-punk band that formed in Sacramento, California, in 1996. After a tour together, members of Sacramento bands Black Liquorice and Popesmashers formed !!!. The band’s name was inspired by the subtitles of the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, in which the clicking sounds of the Bushmens’ Khoisan language were represented as “!”. However, as the bandmembers themselves say, !!! is pronounced by repeating thrice any monosyllabic sound. Chk Chk Chk is the most common pronunciation, but they could just as easily be called Pow Pow Pow, Bam Bam Bam, Uh Uh Uh, etc. The eight members of !!! had grown up playing various breeds of punk and experimental music, and increasingly found themselves wanting to play music in the vein of the stuff they were dancing to.