It's important to say the band's name correctly: mum, which is always written without an initial capital letter, is pronounced "moom." The band itself is from Iceland, and the name has no meaning.

"It's just a sound, that's all," says Gunnar "Gunni" Orn Tynes, one the group's three full-time members. A question arises: Has the group ever been mistaken for another band with a name phonetically close to theirs, like Muse or Mew?

"Actually, there's an Austrian band that's also called mum," interjects the other male member of the group, Orvar Poreyjarson Smarason. "One time we were playing in Dublin and when we showed up we saw these big posters. The name was mum, but the picture was of these Austrian guys. Later, I remember, they got booked into a festival in Portugal and we kept getting phone calls from people asking if it was us who were playing there."