Meet the voices behind WeSingYourTweet

BOULDER, CO - WeSingYourTweets has started getting attention in the Twittersphere for their 140-character songs based on people's tweets, which they have pegged as a "sweet."

Started by friends and band mates Kevyn Smith and Jeremy Johnson, the Seattle-based duo has performed the tweets of everyone from the Dalai Lama to Rihanna and Sue Sylvester of "Glee." Tweet them @wesingyourtweet and they just might Re-sweet you, too.

How does WeSingYourTweets work?

We usually spend the day looking for tweets that look lyrical. We take screen shots of all the tweets we like, we then get together in the evening and turn them into songs, or as we call them, "sweets" (song tweets). It's a fast pace - once we get the take that we like, we move on to the next tweet. We then edit all the movies, add any extra graphics if needed, and then post to our blog and send out a link to the person we re-sweeted (re-tweeted their sweet), letting them know that they have been selected. This also goes to our YouTube and Vimeo, etc. Once we get going, we can usually get through 12-17 sweets in about 2 hours.

What inspired you to begin this project?

We were taking a break from recording with our band and were specifically told by our band mates to not do open mics, which is where we like to spend a lot of time, generally. We were going a little crazy not playing out while we were waiting on next steps. One night, we were joking about how funny it would be to write short 140-character songs and post them on Twitter. Then we thought about it and realized, that there are a ton of songwriters already on Twitter - why not just sing tweets from other people, take their tweets and turn their words into songs? We really started it as a social musical experiment to just see what would happen - it was meant to be a one-off thing, but we got such an amazing positive response from the people we sweeted that we decided to keep doing it. 100,000+ hits and 500 videos later, we are still going strong and having a good time doing what we do. Some people love it, some people think we are crazy, but it seems to make people happy and we love that. And it helps with our songwriting skills so ... onward. :)

When did it begin?

August 2010, but we really started sweeting full-on in September, so about 6 months now.

Were you musicians before?

Yes Jeremy and I (Kevyn) have been in bands for a while, we have an electric band (4-piece) and an acoustic band (just the two of us), and have been playing and singing together for over 10 years.

What are your day jobs?

Jeremy works for the Institute for Systems Biology, and I run an interactive agency doing digital marketing called Peel Interactive.

What have some of the most popular been?

If the tweet is very popular on Twitter, odds are the sweet might be popular. Recently we did Newark Mayor @CoryBooker - people love that guy, so his sweet got a lot of hits. @TheDalaiLama got a lot of people retweeting the resweet. Our SOTU series, Sweets of the Union, was pretty big. It's interesting because some people who you think will be popular don't get as many hits as people that you would not expect. It's the Internet, you never know what will happen.

How do you decide who you're going to sing about?

We try to pick tweets from people we like, or think are interesting and we also look at the tweet as if it were lyrics to a song. If it looks and sounds like it could be a good song we pick it. Or if it's so funny where we can play off of the humor we pick it. A lot of people think we just "sweet" celebs, but the honest truth is, there are a lot of celebs we have done and a lot we have not done. It really comes down to what they write. We usually, unless we can make it work, stay away from tweets with @ signs because it does not flow right, which is a bummer since there are some great tweeters out there that only write in that style. Sometimes we get requests to sing. For instance, we recently got a note asking us to do a "sweet" for Zach, the kid that went to the Super Bowl. So we take it as it comes and sweet in the now.

What are your looking to do with all of this in the future?

We are mainly just having fun and seeing what happens. Right now, it's about building a following, and getting traffic and building up content and making people smile :)