Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement, New Zealand's seventh-best musical duo and HBO's hippest stars, try to explain their unlikely road to stardom.

Q1 Playboy: What’s the story behind your band’s name, Flight of the Conchords?

MCKENZIE: One version is that it came to me in a dream. I dreamed about flying Gibson guitars, which looked like tiny Vs flying together in a V formation. I told Jemaine about the dream and mentioned the guitars reminded me of Concordes. He changed it to Conchords, and we had our name.

CLEMENT: We also tell people we considered calling ourselves Tanfastic, which is the name of a suntan lotion. But really, we came up with the name right before our first gig. We were the opening act at a comedy night, and we didn’t have a name yet. I went to the bathroom and noticed the brand of toilet was Concorde. So I came back and suggested the Conchords, and Bret added the “Flight of” part.

MCKENZIE: Once we’d done a few shows with that name it was too late to change.

Q2 Playboy: On your HBO series, also called Flight of the Conchords, you play characters who have your names and musical ambitions. How autobiographical is this show?

MCKENZIE: We’re more like our characters than ourselves. I’d say I’m 130 percent like my character.

CLEMENT: They’re more accurate reflections of who we are than who we actually are. Our TV characters are beyond real people.

MCKENZIE: Off camera I don’t even feel like myself. I’m maybe 70 percent of the man I am on the show.

Q3 Playboy: Since the show has taken off, you’ve become sex symbols. As comedians, do you take that seriously?

MCKENZIE: I take it very seriously. It’s a lot of responsibility. I do everything in my power to promote my sex symbolism. [laughs]

CLEMENT: I don’t think anybody in New Zealand, which is where we’re from, takes us seriously as sex symbols at all. It’s just here in America, for some reason. Maybe our accents have something to do with it.

Q4 Playboy: While you were performing at your record label’s anniversary party, an audience member threw a pair of boxers onto the stage. What does that tell you about your fan base?

MCKENZIE: Panties are more traditional to throw during a concert.

CLEMENT: Yes, but beggars can’t be choosers.

MCKENZIE: The warmth of his boxers was definitely the most disturbing part.

CLEMENT: Yeah, you don’t want a warm pair of boxers thrown at your face. Especially when the warmth is accompanied by dampness.

Q5 Playboy: As your fictional manager, Murray, reminds you on the show, “Girlfriends and bands don’t mix.” Have you stayed true to his advice?

CLEMENT: Not really, no. But I don’t like to talk about my private life. And I try not to take relationship advice from fictional characters.

MCKENZIE: Especially not fictional characters saying lines we wrote for them.

Q6 Playboy: Fans at your live concerts seem to know all the lyrics and will occasionally sing along with the punch lines. Is that disconcerting?

MCKENZIE: It takes away the surprise. I think people enjoy us most the first time they hear us.

CLEMENT: It’s very different from how it was in the beginning. Sometimes it feels as if we’re doing The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Everybody sings along to every line. I try to never listen to them.

MCKENZIE: We turn the sound up so loud onstage that we can’t hear the fans. It’s the opposite of the Beatles. They couldn’t hear themselves because of their screaming fans, but we turn up our speakers so loud that we can hear only ourselves.

Q7 Playboy: You’ve bragged about being New Zealand’s fourthmost- popular folk parody band. Since your success in America, have you moved up to third—or even second?

CLEMENT: I think we’ve dropped a few points. We’re number seven now, maybe even lower. We’ve moved down quite a bit for selling out.

MCKENZIE: There’s a lot of competition in New Zealand for that top spot.

Q8 Playboy: Do you sometimes feel like ambassadors for your home country?

MCKENZIE: Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson put New Zealand on the map, but he put it on the map as Middle-earth, not as New Zealand.

CLEMENT: A lot of what Jackson purports to be true about New Zealand is actually a lie.

MCKENZIE: Despite what you may believe from watching The Lord of the Rings, New Zealand does not have a large hobbit population.

CLEMENT: At least not as many as he makes out.