Their party’s started

Elton John comparisons he can handle, but Jake Shears draws the line with the Village People. Sure, Shears is gay. Yes, he fronts a quintet from New York. But Scissor Sisters aren’t homosexual caricatures pelvic-thrusting to a canned beat.

“We’re a band. Village People is five guys singing along to a CD or something.... I would like to think that what we do is a little more progressive,” said Shears, a former go-go dancer who is making his singles a little differently these days.

Since the group’s Bee Gees-ified version of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” stormed the clubs in early 2004, Scissor Sisters have scored hit after hit in the U.K., making their self-titled debut the biggest record in Britain last year. Their breakthrough single, which began as a B-side, is also up for dance song of the year at next month’s Grammy Awards, competing against reigning dance queens Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue as well as electronic artists Basement Jaxx and the Chemical Brothers.

Co-fronted by Shears and Ana Matronic, a singer who describes herself as “a drag queen stuck in a woman’s body,” Scissor Sisters delights in sexual exploration and the skewering of stereotypes. Tracks such as “Take Your Mama,” about a gay man coming out to his mother at a dance club, and the bump-and-grind “Filthy/Gorgeous,” about the sexual habits of a ghetto princess, highlight their storytelling and gender-bending sass.

Favoring flamboyant attire, cheeky lyrics and glittery dance tracks, Scissor Sisters would have been as welcome at Studio 54 as they’ve been with modern-day clubbers and indie kids. A handful of their songs are ballads, but most are party-friendly throwbacks, with prominent beats and double-tracked vocals that frequently travel into falsetto terrain.

But don’t call them disco or, even worse, gay disco.

“We really wanted to make it so anybody could listen to it and totally make it accessible, whether it be a grandma or whoever,” Shears said.

“The media are definitely a lot more ready and eager to pigeonhole us by referring to our music as gay music or saying we’re a gay band. In reality, music transcends sexuality. I don’t believe sexuality really matters when it comes to music.”

It certainly hasn’t in Britain, where the group has sold 1.8 million records, been on the cover of NME and opened for Elton John and Duran Duran.

By comparison, the group has sold just 180,000 copies of the record here.

“That kind of margin, I’m having a hard time saying, ‘Well, maybe people just have different tastes in England than America,’ ” said Shears. “There’s lots of other factors involved.”

“It wasn’t easy to start off with in England with media,” said Seb Chew, A&R; manager for Polydor UK, which originally put out the group’s album in England. “Radio and all the rest of it, the difficulty is tenfold in America when you’re trying to do something a little bit different.

“I believe they’ll crack it with touring and spending time there. I believe they’ll make it work.”

Like radio, which Shears calls “fascist.” Few commercial stations have touched the group since the record came out last July. Like many dance acts, they’ve found their following through clubs, college radio and raves in the mainstream music magazines, Spin and Rolling Stone.

Oddly, the group also appeared on the morning television show “Live With Regis and Kelly.” Twice.

“That cracks me up,” Shears said. “It’s just like, ‘Regis’? I was gay as can be. I didn’t ham it up too bad, but it was morning television in a flouncy shirt and just kind of shaking it.”

Shears has been shaking it since 1999, when he got together with longtime friend Babydaddy and started “fiddling around,” with little in the way of plans except “to make songs that might possibly be played in clubs.” A two-piece, they played their first show shortly after Sept. 11 at a cabaret hosted by Matronic, whom they later asked to join the group.

The electronic punk movement known as electroclash was in its infancy when Shears, Babydaddy and Matronic added Del Marquis on guitar and Paddy Boom on drums. Two weeks after making their live debut as a quintet, they’d inked a deal for two singles with A Touch of Class Records.

“Comfortably Numb” was the B-side on the first. The rest, as they say, is history.

“I’m shocked that we have the Grammy nomination because that song is a ghetto song,” said Shears, whose group is now signed to Universal. “We made it in a bedroom.”

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Susan Carpenter can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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Scissor Sisters

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Where: The Wiltern LG, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

When: 9 p.m. Monday

Price: $26

Info: (213) 388-1400 or www.thewiltern.com