A pretty family portrait is more a still from a Karan Johar film than an album cover of a rock band. But Delhi band Them Clones goes for all things parental in their first album Love. Hate. Heroes . Its cover is a cheerful group shot of the band members and their families. “It’s about parents — we love them, we hate them, but they are our heroes,” says the drummer Surojit Dev.

The vocalist Prithwish Dev says the songs were written over a period of nine years: “We have been recording for the past two years, trying to introduce a product that we are proud of.” For that, they took some help from the fans. After recording 17 tracks, the band put them online for voting. The 12 most voted tracks, which not surprisingly include My life , Zephyretta and The bomb song, have found their way to the album. The band has now unabashedly gone ahead and placed a blank CD along with the album so that listeners can record the songs and pass it on — and spread their music. “It’s just a promotional tool to make people want to burn a copy for their friends,” says the guitarist Gucci Singh. Desperate times do call for desperate measures, but there will be some old-school stuff too: a tour across Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad . Their next Delhi show is at Garden of Five Senses on October 31.