Music: The boys from Oz

'We were No. 1 on the pop charts in Australia," said Julian Hamilton by phone from Barcelona. The singer and keyboardist of the Presets seemed more amazed than cocky, adding, "We were ahead of Mariah Carey."

The Presets regularly sell out live shows in their native country, but are less well-known in the United States. Hamilton and bandmate Kim Moyes, both 31, seem determined to change that via nearly nonstop touring this year to promote their 2008 CD "Apocalypso."

In May, they played a blazing rainy-night set at the Triple Rock in Minneapolis, and they're back in town Tuesday at the Fine Line, co-headlining with fellow Aussie pop stars and Modular labelmates Cut Copy (also making their second Twin Cities stop this year).

The Presets' first full-length CD, "Beams," came out in 2005, when the duo was still a Sydney-based underground buzz band. The record skittered around between genres -- dance/punk, goth/disco, future/pagan, synth/pop. It included the pan-global beats, killer sampled bongos and effects-laden vocals of "I Go Hard, I Go Home" and the lyrical, even elegiac hit single "Girl and the Sea."

"The big stuff at the time was the Rapture and Franz Ferdinand," Moyes said. "We were into that, but we liked Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers even more." Other telltale influences, in no particular order: PiL, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, New Order, Kylie Minogue, the Smiths.

Out of the studio

"'Beams' was made without us really being a live band yet," said Moyes. Unlike some electronic duos who prefer studio seclusion, Hamilton and Moyes took to the road with gusto, playing everywhere from a gay leatherman's street dance in San Francisco to the huge Glastonbury festival in England. "We toured with 'Beams' for a few years, and we realized that we were more of a club act," said Moyes.

"'Apocalypso' is what spewed out of us," said Hamilton, who met Moyes while both were classically oriented students in Sydney's Conservatorium of Music. "We wanted to be really honest, a bit less interested in a hit [than with 'Beams'], doing what came naturally to us. When I listen to 'Beams' now it sounds not immature, but unrefined. This time around it's a little more considered."

Though he frets that the new CD may lack "some spark and ideas" found in "Beams," Moyes thinks "Apocalypso" is "better executed in terms of vision, with a more holistic approach."

The band's new CD is not lacking in singles, led by the lush and gorgeous "This Boy's in Love," the shades-of-Devo podium-pounding of "My People" and the rocker "Talk Like That," all three of which have been shot as videos.

For "This Boy's in Love," photographer Casper Balslev directed a mostly black-and-white vision in which two shirtless guys wrestle in a shallow lake of milk while Hamilton and Moyes endure a blackout dust storm like some scene from Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel "The Road."

"It was horrific, the making of that video," Hamilton said. "But it's my favorite video, so heartbreaking. I'm thrilled with it."