Our occasional series “Secret History” features profiles of past D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District’s contributions to music over time. In this installment, we revisit garage-rock upstarts the Recoys’ Rekoys LP (Troubleman Unlimited/Realistic Records, 2003).

Garage rock is pretty great. There’s something undeniable about open chords, steeped in loads of reverb, crashing into stone-solid soul rhythms. Preening singers belting out gloriously ragged vocals. Vintage organs washing over everything. It’s all very American and very cool, vaguely threatening, reveling in immediacy and raw power. And you can dance to it. Perfect.

And before bands like The White Stripes and The Hives hit the big time peddling a garage-revival sound, D.C. had its own garage revival of sorts in the 1990s. The Make-Up, The Delta 72 and the District-bred, NYC-bound Jonathan Fire*Eater dusted off their Fender Twins and their Farfisa keys and started taking cues from The Troggs, The Sonics and The Kingsmen, pounding out staggering anthems with no shortage of style. It was manic and mod and really, really fun — a nice break from the city’s ruling post-hardcore riff fests.

The Recoys were some of the District’s finest purveyors of garage-rock ruckus, harnessing a vintage sound and injecting it with a punk intensity native to the Potomac’s stony shores. Future Walkmen Hamilton Leithauser (vocals and guitar) and Peter Bauer (guitar) founded the group with Damon Hege (guitar), Mike Sheehan (bass) and Hugh McIntosh (drums) in 1996, and over three years managed to attract a dedicated following of admirers drawn to their Nation of Ulysses-via-Velvet Underground posturing and hooky attack marked by front-and-center drums — “Our drummer had a really fantastic set of drums,” recalls Leithauser. “It’s the best set of drums I’ve ever heard in my life.” — and chiming chords. Ramshackle and rough-hewn, The Recoys were the real thing.