Or, as it's been put by Sim, who plays bass and coleads the trio, which includes Jamie Smith: "Romy's like a sister to me."
It's a bright Austin afternoon, and The xx have just flown in from New York. The night before, they performed their subtle and sexy "Islands" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Though the trio didn't perform with the Roots, the house band's drummer, Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, tweeted approvingly about Smith's hands-on drum machine skills.
The trio, who generated some of the biggest buzz among South by Southwest's 1,700 acts, have shown themselves to be masters of musical restraint and connoisseurs of modern R&B (hunt down their non-album covers of Aaliyah's "Hot Like Fire" and Womack & Womack's hit "Teardrops").
Before playing four SXSW shows and squaring off against Margaret Cho in a Spin magazine ping-pong tournament, Croft and Sim walk into the closed 18th-floor restaurant of their hotel, overlooking the Texas capitol building.
As always, they're wearing all black and long chains around their necks, Croft's adorned with a medallion she picked up at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A graphic arts student who's put university aside for now, she designed the band's logo - a bold white-on-black x.
The name "was always an aesthetic thing," she says, as Sim talks simultaneously with a New York radio reporter. "It doesn't have a meaning. We just like x's. We made the name before the music, and I like that it's ambiguous and people can read into it if they want."
Croft and Sim started making music - independently, and then together - at 16, a few years after Croft became "obsessed" with music.
"I really loved the [L.A. punk] band The Distillers," says the sultry-voiced singer. "I had posters of Brody Dalle all over my room. I had fair hair then, and I dyed my hair black."
