The band Wallpaper layers on the influences

"In my eyes it describes us perfectly," says Wallpaper singer/multi-instrumentalist Steve Potter, of the band name he came up with. "We kinda take a vintage sound off these bands we all love from the '60s... " "Or the '90s!" interjects drummer/singer Derek Kelley. "Pretty much we take something from each decade," Potter concedes, "and then kind of paste it together, make a collage of some sort. Almost like wallpaper."

We're in the very lived-in basement of Potter's parents' house in Lake Tapps, a leafy exurb near Auburn, 45 minutes south of Seattle. An LP by rock eccentric Kim Fowley plays on the turntable. A pingpong table is littered with yard-sale ephemera: Super-8 reels and projector, a vintage typewriter, a Rubik's cube, a globe, patches and pins and pens and paintbrushes. The band — Potter, sporting an Anton Chigurh bowl cut and a cardigan; Derek, in a tie and old-lady sunglasses, a spitting look- and talk-alike for Crispin Glover's manic rocker in "River's Edge"; and his brother Spencer Kelley, the neatly trimmed straight man — is packed onto an old couch facing the practice space in the corner.

The trio has been friends since elementary school. Now in their mid-20s, they share a common aesthetic in both art and life, cut and pasted from thrift-store antifashion, post-Napster musical eclecticism and willful suburban pariahdom. It's a furthering of Potter's collage analogy, and it's all over this artfully cluttered basement, not to mention "On the Chewing Gum Ground," Wallpaper's debut released this week on Olympia indie K Records. With 13 songs in 42 minutes, the album is a precise pop confection spiked with sugary British-invasion harmonies and wily garage rock attitude.

"I swear when Steve found the name Wallpaper, it just all came together," Derek says. "We kind of viewed ourselves through that lens, I think."

"One of the other things in the formation of Wallpaper is we decided we weren't gonna do certain things," Potter says.

No disco beats a la Franz Ferdinand. No loud-quiet-loud climaxing a la the Pixies. No delayed guitar a la U2. This is how Wallpaper arrived at the bouncy, youthful sound of a band playing pop for pop's sake.

"We stripped away all the pedals, all the extra cymbals," Spencer says. "We might play simple music, but it made us smarter musicians."

K Records chief Calvin Johnson noticed those smarts when he first saw Wallpaper at the Sunset back in April '06.

"It didn't seem to affect them negatively that there wasn't a lot of people paying attention to them," Johnson says on the phone.

After meeting at that gig, he and Spencer kept in touch during the recording of "Chewing Gum Ground," but it wasn't until the day after the band announced during a KEXP interview that they planned on releasing the album independently that they got the call from K.

"We very well could've broken up and not had this record come out," Spencer says. "I think he [Johnson] really kind of saved us."

"It's definitely a teen-pop-rockin' kinda vibe that I admire," Johnson says. "They are a band with a very clear vision, a very individual aesthetic, and that's what I like. There's sort of an arty element — just enough, so it's not pretentious, but it's homespun.

"I think the fact that they're from a more isolated environment allowed them to develop in that way," he continues. "Like most of the great bands from Washington are from more out-of-the-way places: the Melvins or Screaming Trees or Girl Trouble."

Detached by distance from the trends and tastes of Seattle, the band vehemently defends its South Sound roots.

"People that live up there, they get wasted every night and start a band every week," Spencer says.

"Some of our friends down here are some of the most creative people we know," Potter says.

"... Who could care less about being a hipster," Derek adds.

"Our group of friends are just as responsible for the music we like, our sense of humor, everything," Spencer says. "I don't think if we would've moved away and stopped hanging out with them we would be this way."

"Maybe one day we'll go to the big hipster pie in the sky, but I don't know," Derek says.

But why not? According to Johnson, Wallpaper is "the kind of pop band that Seattle usually falls in love with for some reason, but in this case they're actually good."

Until then, it's blue-collar jobs in Puyallup by day, band practice in the basement by night and big-city gigs — like their record-release party at the Comet this Saturday (9 p.m., $5) — on the weekends.

Other must-see shows this weekend:

Tonight

• Emerald City Soul Club hosts its annual "Rare Soul Weekender" tonight and Saturday night at Lo_Fi Lounge. More than 20 DJs from all over the U.S. and Europe spin the best vintage dance music you've never heard (8 p.m.-4 a.m. today and Saturday, $8).

• Just in time for cozy scarves and mittens, soft-strumming Rocky Votolato plays a benefit for People for Puget Sound at the HUB Ballroom on the UW campus. With Slender Means and Nazca Lines (7 p.m. today, $10 UW students, $12 public).

Saturday

• The Maldives' MySpace describes their gig at King Cobra with Stone Gossard, the Saturday Knights and more as "an evening of country hip-hop mash-up celebrating all of Seattle's amazing forest volunteers" (8 p.m. Saturday at King Cobra).

Jonathan Zwickel: zwickelicious@gmail.com