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As any foreigner in Indonesia can tell you, being different often puts you at the center of attention, even when you don’t want to be. But standing out is not a problem for the members of The Bugils, a comedy dangdut act that counts on looking different to break into the country’s entertainment industry.

“Bugil” is a slang Indonesian word for “naked,” but also a contraction of “bule gila,” or “crazy foreigner” — a label entertainers Maya Otos and Jason Daniels from the United States and Harry Bond J. from the Netherlands have embraced as a selling point for their act.

“I am still referred to as ‘bugil’ wherever I go,” said Daniels, who has lived in Indonesia for more than 15 years. “I can’t shake it. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but hey — I’m the crazy bule!”

Performing the uniquely Indonesian dangdut, so named because the word sounds like its Indian-inspired drum beats, the newly formed trio has already released two singles, a mobile phone ringback tone and several music videos on YouTube.

The Bugils’ latest video, “Ayuk Sin Ting: False Address” — a bilingual spoof on dangdut star Ayu Ting Ting’s popular “Alamat Palsu” — attracted 1,500 hits in its first two days online. The video features Otos singing in Indonesian and broken English as she searches for her lost love in a village, in a direct parody of Ting Ting’s original low-budget clip.

“My dearest sweetyface, I don’t know his address, long time he’s not come to my place,” Otos croons, sporting oversized earrings and a traditional Javanese kebaya.

Despite the group’s naughty name (a search for “bugil” on YouTube brings up some interesting results), The Bugils consider themselves a family-friendly act. Breaking away from the erotic booty-shaking typical of other dangdut acts, The Bugils’ signature dance move is a variation on the chicken dance, which they have renamed the “soto ayam” (chicken soup), which is also Maya Otos’s name spelled backward.

Aside from the altered lyrics and visual gags, the main source of comedy in the group’s videos is the simple fact that they are foreigners performing Indonesian songs. But The Bugils are well accustomed to making their nationality the butt of the joke.

Last week, I caught up with Daniels and Otos at a TV studio in South Jakarta, where Daniels was preparing for an appearance on “Asing Star” (“Foreign Star”), an “Idol”-style weekly singing contest on Trans7.

Unlike the teenage South Korean, Japanese and European contestants on the show, who earnestly took to the stage to perform carefully rehearsed numbers, Daniels planned to blow the judges away with his rendition of a classic Indonesian rock tune, performed with improvised dance moves and a bright yellow outfit he picked up at Senen Market in Central Jakarta — a gimmick that has worked for him before.

In The Bugils’ previous video, “Hello Dangdut,” the trio are shown arriving by bajaj (motorized rickshaw) at one of Jakarta’s urban kampung areas dressed in brightly colored clothes, sunglasses and feather boas. Singing in Indonesian, they perform their chicken dance to a new arrangement of an old dangdut favorite, and by the end of the video, they have the whole kampung singing and clapping along. The clip has attracted almost 3,000 hits on YouTube.

Judging from the comments made on the video-sharing Web site, Indonesian viewers are mainly impressed by the novelty of seeing the wacky foreigners perform an Indonesian style of music — and a lower-class one at that.

“Wow, I never would have expected it. It turns out that bules like dangdut too!” one viewer commented. “The Bugils taking a bajaj — that’s so hillbilly [ndeso]!” wrote another.

But for The Bugils, getting into kampung culture has long been part of their experience in getting to know Indonesia. Daniels and Bond first met as contestants on “Bule Gila,” a reality TV show based on the concept of watching foreigners attempt menial jobs usually performed by lower-income Indonesians, such as making street food or directing traffic.

The pair competed against each other on the show in a high-energy becak (pedal-powered rickshaw) race. Thanks to their showmanship, the one-off appearance showed up in countless reruns.

For Daniels, the meaning of the word “bule” — mostly used to refer to Westerners — depends on the way it is said. While occasionally spat out in a derogatory tone, the word is usually not intended to be any more offensive than referring to someone by the color of their hair, he said.

“People forget that it actually means ‘albino,’ ” Daniels said. “I actually asked a real albino once, ‘Is bule offensive to you?’ And he said ‘No, it’s neutral.’ It’s kinda funny.”

For Otos, who has lived in Indonesia for four years, using the “bule” label for the comedy act is a way not only to laugh at themselves as outsiders learning to adapt to Indonesian society, but also to show Indonesians that there’s more to being a bule than the usual stereotypes.

“I think people have a really skewed judgement of what it is to be a bule,” she said. “You’re automatically rich, right? With a big house in Kemang? Or there are the hippie types who come to try and save the world. There are those two extremes, and we’re actually somewhere in the middle. We’re definitely middle class and, sorry, we’re not trying to save the world.”

Daniels joked that saving the world would be nice if The Bugils could do it as a “side project.” “But the least we can do is send out the message that not all bules are sombong [arrogant] and drive around behind tinted windows. I actually take bajajs pretty often,” he said.

Bond, who has spent most of his life in Jakarta, often tells people he was “born in Holland, but made in Indonesia.”

“He believes he’s Indonesian,” Otos said. “He grew up here. Indonesia is his ‘power country.’ ” But even speaking fluent Indonesian and having a talent for on-stage antics does not guarantee foreigners a career in the entertainment industry.

“This is making it look easy, but it never is,” Daniels said. One reason The Bugils decided to team up was so that they could work together to promote themselves.

“I have had the experience in other jobs where people resented me for taking a local job and getting paid more because of my passport,” Otos said. “But it’s not like that in the entertainment industry — we’re making it on our own, working for ourselves and being on the same level as local entertainers as well, making less money than the local entertainers, sometimes.”

As Daniels took to the stage for “Asing Star” in his $1-jacket and yellow straw hat from Senen, even the sound engineers couldn’t keep from laughing.

“The culture here is made up of so many different microcultures,” Otos mused as she watched Daniels break into a knee-slide on stage. “And the foreigners here, they really do make the place more colorful.”