Ghostkimo started as a fake band.
"It was my BFA project," band member Lindsay Kane said. "I just made tons of fliers I put around town, saying the date of the show was the day prior, so people would feel bad for missing a show, and they would maybe, like, get interested and, like, 'Oh, man. We just missed this band Ghostkimo that played yesterday."
She built the band members out of papier-mache and photographed herself with them as a groupie.
"I made the puppets for photographs of lewd behavior that a groupie would have," she said. "The book (of photographs) was stolen from the gallery."
"What? Oh my God," her brother and bandmate Ryan Kane said. "I can't believe someone stole that. Jerks."
Ghostkimo plays at Burt's Tiki Lounge on Saturday and at The Stove on Feb. 1.
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"I never wanted to play live shows, though, because I thought it would ruin the image of the band," Lindsay said.
The danceable music of Ryan, Lindsay and Mark Opperman consists of two organs, a tambourine, two guitars, a drum machine and a belt made of old, tiny tambourine cymbals.
"When we can play a show, and everyone starts dancing like crazy, that's the best," Ryan said.
The band played three shows in 2004 before Lindsay moved to New Orleans and played in a band called I'm in Love with Adam Harris. It was made up of three organs and three girls.
"My boyfriend was cheating on me with this girl who was marrying a guy named Adam Harris," she said. "She called my house, and she was like, 'Hey, tell your boyfriend to leave me alone, 'cause I'm marrying Adam Harris. I'm in love with Adam Harris. I'll always be in love with Adam Harris. I'm Mrs. Adam Harris!'"
Sometimes they have sound problems, because it's hard to mic up old organs. But they say it's part of their act.
"I remember the very, very first show that we played at our friend's warehouse in Santa Fe," Ryan said. "Everything went wrong, and there was a huge crowd. We were so excited and geared up to play and one of our organs at the time stopped working."
Someone fetched them a keyboard, but that didn't work either.
"I played a song by myself, which was weird," Ryan said. "And then Lindsay and I played another song 'cause the organ started again, and it was just random and people started leaving. One of our friends, Danny, told this other guy, Paul Collins - he's with Beirut - he was like, 'What's the deal with Ghostkimo?' And Danny said, 'They do that on purpose. They pretend that everything goes wrong,' and the guy totally bought it."
At their last Burt's show, they had sound problems, too.
"With a guitar, you just plug it in and turn it on," he said. "And the organs sound like hell when you do that. In one of our songs, there's this really rumbly bass, and it shakes the floor when you dial it in right, and (the sound guy) got scared that the speakers were going to blow - which, I think, is a rational concern to have."
So the technician turned the sound all the way down, Lindsay said.
"Yeah, I was playing the tambourine to nothing and sort of stopped and started walking along the edge of the stage," she said. "When something happens, and you think it sounds awful, just let it go. That's what we want."
The siblings hail from a Greek town in Florida called Tarpon Springs.
"My relatives always told me to cut my hair and 'marry a nice Greek girl, like your cousin Nicholas,'" Ryan said.
They've been telling Lindsay to marry a Greek since she was 10.
"Every time I wore makeup," she said, "my relatives would be like, 'Who do you think you are - Madonna?'"
