Operating under the name White Williams, 24-year-old Joe Williams is responsible for one of the most intriguing debuts of 2007. Released on the Tigerbeat6 label, Smoke combines state-of-the-art computer manipulation with whomping glam-pop bass lines and hints of ’80s experimentalism. It also features transsexual “It” girl Sophia Lamar on the cover, and a ferocious version of the Bo Diddley–style ’60s stomper “I Want Candy”.

The strangest thing about Williams, though, is not his precocious mastery of the recording studio, his ability to fuse wildly disparate musical idioms, or his infatuation with the seedier side of the club scene. Instead, it’s that—possibly alone among his hipster ilk—he’s seriously thinking of voting Republican in the upcoming U.S. election.

If, that is, his man gets the party’s nomination. And that’s a big “if”.

Interviewed by phone from a New England tour stop, Williams reveals that he’s backing dark-horse candidate Ron Paul as Republican nominee. “He’s the only person that’s saying anything,” he explains, citing the Texas congressman’s commitment to abolishing income tax, legalizing drugs, and ending the Iraq war. “Everyone else has these vague, vague, vague stances on everything. They always divert any question into some weird rhetoric.”

Williams may never get to exercise his vote, however. “If he [Paul] gets to be the Republican nominee, he’ll just get killed,” he says, citing the history of political violence in the United States. But his willingness to entertain the libertarian option is indicative of his open-ended approach to making music, a former hobby that has recently become a full-time preoccupation.

The multitalented singer, guitarist, keyboardist, and sample manipulator points out that he’s been recording tracks since he was in his teens, and that making music helped him get through his arduous five-year training in graphic arts. “Whenever I was done with school, or done working full-time on a design job, that’s when I’d be working on my songs,” he says. And although he cites music’s “disobedient and self-satisfying” nature as the antithesis of the scientific approach to design that he was taught, the cut-and-paste computer skills he learned in school are integral to his sonic approach.

“I think when you become acclimated with computers at a certain level, it kind of transcends what type of software you’re using,” he says. “And if you kind of start thinking more abstractly about making music, that’s when you can start finding parallels with design. You start thinking about quantities of things: quantities of dark sounds and quantities of light sounds, short sounds versus long sounds, the weight of certain sounds.”¦You can kind of get into the same head space as design.”

The next project for Williams is refining his touring show. Smoke was a one-man operation, but to perform its songs live, he’s had to strike a balance between his solo output and more conventional forms of stagecraft.

“What we have is kind of a hybrid of a band and what I do in the studio,” he explains. “I key up loops and run my software with drum sounds and samples, and then I have a bass player and a guitar player. I play synthesizer, and have some vocal effects that I kind of play around with when I sing. Actually, I have a lot of duties on-stage. I wish I had another person to relieve me from becoming an octopus—but it’s working for now, and it’s economical, and I think we pull it off.”

White Williams plays the Media Club on Wednesday (January 23).