If you’re a fan of live music in the Bay Area, you’re sure to have heard of Persephone’s Bees; if not, you’re about to. After being fixtures on the local scene for much of the last six years, the Bees’ happy existence as an indie band was shattered when they were snatched up last year by Columbia Records. We chatted with the band – sultry singer and keyboardist Angelina Moysov, guitarist Tom Ayres, bassist Bart Davenport and drummer Paul Bertolino – about their road to “overnight success.”

On the birth of P’s Bees: “I was stripping in this bar in downtown San Francisco …,” Moysov begins with a smirk. Seriously, though, “Tom and I met in Monterey eleven years ago and we clicked musically right away. I wrote my first song in English and he heard it and said, ‘We’re going to do a band together.’ ” Their relationship has prospered ever since.

The couple went through a number of drummers and bass players until they moved to the Bay Area in 1999, made a demo and used it to recruit a proper rhythm section, landing singer/songwriter Davenport on bass and

Bertolino on drums. Shortly thereafter, Moysov read the phrase “Persephone’s bees” in a poem by Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, and liked how “long and curvy” it sounded.

Moysov says the chemistry between the four players was obvious from the start. But soon, both Bertolino and Davenport felt it was time to concentrate on other projects. Davenport left the Bees in 2000 to focus on his own music, and has released three solo albums, most recently last year’s Maroon Cocoon, which topped KALX’s list of most-played albums of 2005. Despite his success, he missed the camaraderie he shared with the band, and recently returned to the fold.

“Making music with them is a joy,” Davenport says. “Their music is just inherently fun and challenging to play. Angelina is a terrific songwriter, and it is always amazing to watch Tom play guitar. Getting to be onstage with someone like that is a real privilege.”

The buzz on the Bees started early this year. In January, they played the Sundance Film Festival and their song, “Nice Day,” could be heard in ads for Hilton hotels. They played the South by Southwest music conference in March to gushing reviews, and MTV featured them in the Best of SXSW edition of its “You Hear It First” segment. They’ve shot videos for “Nice Day” and “City of Love” with director Chris Hopewell (Radiohead’s “There There,” Franz Ferdinand’s “Dark of the Matinee”). A limited edition EP, A Peek Into the Underworld, was released in April, and their first full-length CD, Notes from the Underworld, will be in stores August 29. A nationwide tour is planned for later this year.

As exciting and unexpected as it was to be signed, Moysov says it wasn’t a lifelong dream come true; she’s only now breaking out of her own “small mentality” to visualize the band becoming a commercial success.

“It was such a shock and a surprise because I’d really written all of that off,” Moysov says. “I was kind of anti- being on a record label because we’re a live band, we love playing live, and that’s all we did. But all of a sudden it hits you one day, ‘It’s been ten years I’ve been doing this, I would like to see some kind of result.’ ”

Persephone’s Bees took a roundabout route to a record deal, which began when they inadvertently impressed their future producer, Eric Valentine, at one of their shows.

“I went to Paradise Lounge to see another band play that evening,” Valentine said via email. “I showed up a bit early and I remember thinking I had to find what CD they’re playing in the bar ’cause it was amazing.

[Then] I realized it wasn't a CD and that [the Bees were] playing around the corner right next to the bar. It was totally undeniable; the music was smart, fun and impossible to walk away from. I wanted to make a record with them because I love their music.”

“After shows I’d have people coming up to me, saying, ‘I’m a producer,’ ‘I’m an engineer’ … so I kept thinking, ‘Whatever, some guy gave me his card,’ ” Moysov says about her first meeting with the producer. Some time later, when the band realized who he was, they called and found out he was serious. But because of Valentine’s tight schedule, finishing the album took a bit longer than expected.

“He’d be like, ‘OK, you guys, I have two days! Drive down to record drums!’ ” Moysov explains. “It took a year to make the record because it was done in pockets between his really big projects.”

Valentine was in the process of starting his own label, 3 Entertainment, and wanted to release the record himself. But the band were anxious to get the music heard and decided to explore their options.

“We did one showcase, a couple of major record labels came out, looked at us and said, ‘We don’t know how to market this,’ ” Moysov explains. “And I went, ‘OK, thank you very much, I’m done with showcasing,’ ” she says with a laugh. “We’ve always been an indie band, we’ll just keep doing our thing.”

Right around that time, the band’s manager sent a copy of their CD to Keith Naftaly, head of A&R at Columbia Records, as an example of Valentine’s production work for possible use with another band. But Naftaly was more interested in the Bees; he signed them right away.

“[I heard] their demo and toward the end of the second song, ‘Climbing,’ I just became fascinated and mesmerized by what I was hearing,” Naftaly said via email. “I mean, who is this woman singing? Is that a Russian accent? I remember thinking ... this is retro yet futuristic, playful yet so dark ... the type of top quality, clever, original pop music that I live for.

“Once I met Angelina and heard the band play live, I knew this had to be a ‘passion play’ signing for me at Columbia,” he went on. “They might not sound like the flavor of the moment or qualify as a marketing no-brainer, but their music is genius and I believe that Angelina has what it takes to become a global icon.”

It’s easy to understand how overwhelming it can be for musicians who sign to a major label and find themselves part of a corporation.