HIGH tea at The Windsor is a posh Melbourne institution, and DMA’S have turned up exactly how you’d expect them to: tracksuit tops, tatty baseball hats, and aviator shades.

In fact, they’ve taken so much liberty with the “neat-casual” dress code they get mistaken by the lobby staff for some layabouts trying to use the bathroom.

Once the mix-up is cleared, the band’s three core members – Tommy O’Dell, Johnny Took, and Matt Mason – take a seat at a back table and tuck into the three-tiered smorgasbord like ducks to water.

“I feel more comfortable here than some shitty pub,” says Tommy, articulating why we’re here in the first place: to put DMA’S in a context other than a pub.

Yep, the most pubbiest band in Sydney are all pubbed out. Johnny and Matt (who goes as Mason) still live above a pub. They played a listening party for second album For Now at a mate’s pub in Sydney the night before. And the band recorded most of its predecessor, Hills End, in a room above The Lady Hampshire in Sydney’s inner-west.

That room would double as their rehearsal space until a stray punter left a present for them after-hours one night. “It all went downhill after someone vomited in control room,” says Mason after a mouthful of scone.