Montreal synth-rock couple Alexei Perry and Dan Boeckner, alias Handsome Furs, are up for a Juno Award for their latest album. (Liam Maloney/Sub Pop Records)

Ever since the first wandering troubadour strapped on a lute and took his tunes on the road, being a musician has held the promise of travel.

It's rare to find artists as enthralled with the nomadic lifestyle as Montreal synth-rock duo Handsome Furs.

Still, it's rare to find artists as enthralled with the nomadic lifestyle as Handsome Furs. The Montreal synth-rock duo is made up of married couple Alexei Perry and Dan Boeckner, and globe-trotting is in large measure the band's raison d'etre. Back in 2007, Boeckner, who's also a member of indie rock group Wolf Parade, wanted his then-fiancée to see Finland. His solution? He convinced Perry to collaborate on a few tunes so they could book themselves some Scandinavian shows.

Three years and two albums later, Handsome Furs have become a dreamy post-punk marriage, between Perry's laser-cut keyboards-and-beats and Boeckner's ragged guitar riffs and raw-throated vocals. Their latest album, Face Control, is up for Best Alternative Album at the Junos this year, but as it turns out, all this rock 'n' roll success is merely a vehicle for Perry and Boeckner to realize their real aspirations: to become foreign journalists.

Touring musicians see their fair share of chaos and carnage. The weird thing is that last year, Perry and Boeckner were recruited as international correspondents — by CNN.

"It feels like we're the luckiest sons of bitches in the world!" Perry exclaims in a recent interview in Toronto.

CNN invited the Montreal indie rock duo to produce a video chronicle of their 2009 tour of Asia. The snippets were transformed into a striking web series (a collaboration with Vice-branded VBS.TV) called Indie Asia, which premiered this past January. The five-part series is well-packaged and polished, but stays true to the off-kilter, exuberant spirit of Handsome Furs. Best of all, you get to revel in the sense of discovery and delight shared by Perry and Boeckner as they visit locales like the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

In some places they played, like Tianjin, China, the Handsome Furs' performance was the first rock show to be held in the area — and often the only rock show the kids had ever seen. Perry raves about Beijing, where a nascent music community is taking root after a long period during which rock 'n' roll — like most North American influences — was basically prohibited.

"It's only a 10-year history of having live shows at all," Perry begins. "There are these new, kinda crappy venues that are being set up — for the first time ever, really. And it's not competitive — people are just trying to help each other out, and trying to help each other do something good. I felt so impressed and so blown away by so many of the people we met and so much of the music we heard. I just felt like it was such a f---ing wonderful opportunity to be able to see that, and to be a part of it in even the smallest way, as an outside band."

(Sub Pop Records)

Boeckner chimes in. "It's like that early punk scene in New York in the mid-'70s, where you had a band like Television alongside the Talking Heads, and Blondie and Patti Smith, and all that downtown art stuff was starting."

The Handsome Furs catalogue is many ways a document of the places they've been. Their 2007 debut, Plague Park, was named after an area in Helsinki where pastoral greenery covers a massive gravesite for victims of an 18th-century epidemic. Radio Kaliningrad, a driving anthem off Face Control, nods to the Russian seaport that borders Poland and Lithuania. Nyet Spasiba ("No, thank you" in Russian) couches a woozy recollection of a Soviet coastal hotel in thudding beats and hazy guitars. White City was inspired by Belgrade, and was originally created as a rough demo for Face Control, then reworked after Handsome Furs returned to the Serbian capital.

Boeckner and Perry finish each other's sentences and swap face-splitting grins across the table during our interview in a seedy, black-lit Toronto bar. The energy between them fairly crackles offstage; during their live shows, it's downright explosive. Onstage, Boeckner comes across like a scrawny punk Springsteen, ripping on a battered electric guitar while delivering unexpectedly sweet melodies in an earthy yowl. Perry occupies what could be a boring, stationary role, but she matches Boeckner in energy, managing to pull off scissor kicks and other acrobatic stunts while manning her keyboard.

The band has a surprisingly huge following throughout Eastern Europe — large enough to justify two full tours in the last year. Hard work and repeat performances helped to build up a solid fan base, but Boeckner also thinks there's something about the Handsome Furs aesthetic that appeals to an Eastern European ethos.

"All those ex-Soviet Bloc countries broke away from — or started to break away — from Russia during Perestroika and Glasnost, when the cracks started appearing. Around that time, the soundtrack for them — not unlike the way hippie music like Jefferson Airplane was the soundtrack of the '60s — was hardcore [punk]. So Eastern Europeans, I've found, have this really amazing knowledge of punk rock. I think they like the punk rock element. And they like the energy onstage. But they also like the drum machine, too, because they loooove techno."

Boeckner was shocked by the band's Juno nomination, but he thinks it's a sign that the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is making a necessary step toward relevance.

"I think the Junos basically had to catch up," he insists. "They can't keep giving awards to Hedley or whatever every year. There's a definite tiered music system in Canada. There are bands that become Cancon stars [but] can't play for more than 150 people outside of Canada.

"Where the indie-rock stuff factors in is that in Canada, a band like Plants and Animals, for example, will not play for anywhere near as many people as Hedley, ever. They won't! But I'm pretty sure if Plants and Animals goes to San Antonio, Tex., or Chicago, they're gonna get more people out than Hedley will.

"If you wanna make it as a Cancon star, there's a definite path that's been trampled down. And I think this year, it's cool that the Junos are recognizing people that didn't do that. We're not gonna spend our entire career just doing the loop in Canada and working that, but we're going to become actual international artists and export Canadian culture. And then come back and comment on it."

"And our parents are stoked about the Junos," Perry adds, laughing. "My dad sent me flowers. It's really amazing. I actually cried."

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBC News.