By Anna Wiegenstein, The Daily Iowan

A snake sunning itself is a common image - one typically used to represent the height of laziness, especially now, as peak of summer draws nearer. It's lucky for Cobra Starship, then, that the serpent in its name is more commonly used to represent stealth, killer instinct, and power.

"I am actually working on music as we speak," Alex Suarez, the bassist for the New York City synth-rockers said at the start of a DI interview. "Just working on some demo ideas, I guess. We're always writing, on tour or at home."

It's statements such as these that have allowed Starship - Suarez, frontman Gabe Saporta, guitarist Ryland Blackinton, drummer Nate Novarro, and keytarist Victoria Asher - to release two full-length albums, go through a lineup change, and make the switch from opening act at the Picador to headliner in just under two years.

"I love going out to the Midwest, I'm really excited to go to Iowa," said Suarez, who recalled the group's last Iowa City visit in fall 2006 with fellow label-mates Gym Class Heroes. "We figured it'd be really fun to hit up some cities we don't normally get to go to or haven't been to in a while.

"Plus, we can take the opportunity to make it a little more personal now. We're trying to keep that - those kind of special moments when you come out to a show."

It's a good opportunity to take, considering that Cobra Starship, after the "little mini-blast," as the bassist termed it, of 10 shows on the West Coast - of which the Iowa City date is part - will then spend the following three months among the top billed acts of the Vans Warped Tour. All this, and the band has existed for just under three years.

Starship's energy level and work ethic is fairly unquestionable, despite beginning under some fairly suspect circumstances.

Said Saporta, who was previously most known for his much more soul-searching rock group Midtown, in a past interview with the DI on the group's origins, "That's what the cobra who came down from the future told me, like, 'Listen. You can't always take yourself this seriously. You have to be able to have a good time.' "

A band begun on a desert vision quest isn't one that quickly attracts other members. Ultimately, though, Suarez and Blackinton, longtime friends, were told about the band by Saporta's former Midtown bandmate Rob Hitt.

"'Well, I'm up for anything, always, so let's do this,'" recalled Suarez his reaction as being.

One by one, the current lineup cemented itself, and the group toured, moving slowly from first opener all the way up to its own headlining U.S. tour, which sold out. Somewhere along the way, the itch to write became too strong to ignore, and the group members tried something completely new - writing together.

"The first record [While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets] wasn't written as a band - there wasn't even a band yet, Gabe hadn't put together the band yet," Suarez pointed out. "We're all creative, we're all capable of doing it, so we all just wrote the second [¡Viva La Cobra] together."

Producing current hit single "Guilty Pleasure," ¡Viva La Cobra! is able to refine the technique of the group while maintaining the same spirit Suarez has when he laughs off the idea of regulating his energy before the three-month battering of Warped Tour:

"We don't really regulate our energy, we kind of just unleash the beast all the time, you know? We try not to regulate our energy."