When I was learning html, the view source function was the greatest thing in the world, because you could look at how other people coded something, then figure out how to do what you wanted. If I ever saw anything really neat, I would just find out who the designer was and instant messaged them and asked for a bit of a lesson, of course, it wasnt a designer like the guy that did the nickelback site, just small time personal websites. You can learn a lot by looking at other peoples code, but by no means should you take their code, or images.

Your friends are music artists, but if they want to express themselves over the internet, they are going to need to become design artists as well.