Sometimes, bands are good at being “cool.” They have the look and the sound (or at least one of the two) that seems tailor-made for mass appeal, and they rock it with full force. The Dustys had some pretty “cool” cards in their corner. They toured the country with radio-rock Killers soundalikes The Bravery, for one thing. They had a sound that could go fuzzy and ambient, but was more likely to hit all the dissonant, punchy post-punk notes that made us love 2005’s resurgence of such songs.

Then singer David Hodgson stopped worrying about what sounded cool and The Dustys became something better…they became interesting. Their music took a turn towards the poppy, but still changed tempo mid-song. Their lyrical content went from vague to borderline bizarre. Yet they’re no less tight than they’ve ever been. We talked to Hodgson about the inspiration for the new material (which they’ll be performing tonight at the Black Cat) and about his touring philosophy.

Find them online: http://www.myspace.com/thedustysmusic
Buy their music: http://thedustys.bandcamp.com/
See them next: Tonight at the Black Cat with Modern Man and Harper Blynn.

How long have you guys been a band?

We’ve been a band in some form or another since, it might be something like five years? It’s gone through many different lineup changes. It started with me making music and it’s grown into what it is now.

There are five people listed on the Myspace page…is that correct that you’re currently a five-piece?

We are a five- or six-piece, just depending on who can play that night. We have an extra guy, Eamonn [Aiken], who helps write some of the songs, but he’s really busy. He helps record at the Bastille studio which is part of Inner Ear studios, and if he has a client, he’s not able to play with us. I understand that.

I’m unfamiliar with Merrifield Records, the imprint that has put out your EP. Are they local?

That is something that my friend from Falls Church, Michael Hinder — who is also in the band The Bravery, he’s the bass player — he wanted to start making his own music and make some more rock and roll stuff than the music he was making with that band. So he kind of turned to all of his friends and said, why don’t we just make…I kind of describe it as a family — like a support group. It’s definitely not a traditional label. There’s no contract or anything like that. We play shows together. We help each other with things. We help each other with design and getting the word out and stuff like that.

So, did that tour you did with The Bravery a couple years ago came together because you were already friends?

Yeah. That was pretty much friends helping friends.

One of the things that struck me reading your tour diaries was the combination of rock star moments since the Bravery had a radio hit and played larger venues…and DIY touring stuff like sleeping on people’s couches.

I mean, that’s what I’m used to. I was in an old D.C. band called The Shakedowns for seven years, and we just toured around in a broken down van and slept on couches and that’s probably my favorite way to do it. I miss that when we don’t have that. It’s a lot more of an adventure.

On that tour, it was amazing having all the rock star stuff that is definitely not something that you need, but it’s kind of fun when it just gets given to you. Room with video games in it. Hot dinner.

Plus, you still managed to have an adventure what with your van breaking down.

Yeah, our van broke down for sure, and we got stuck in Gothenburg, Nebraska for three days which was kind of a nightmare.

That was all two years ago. You haven’t been too active recently. Is that because you’ve been writing new material?

Well, the true answer is that after that Bravery tour, I really didn’t know what I was going to do. I started going to school for graphic design. I’ve been working at a coffee shop for most of my life and my dream is to not work at that coffee shop someday. Maybe get a design job someday. So, I really dove into that and didn’t really have much planned for music, and then music kind of crept up on me and just full on attacked me and I got really excited about it again, like, earlier this year. I just started so many songs and the material just kept coming and coming, and now we’re preparing to put out our first full-length. I wasn’t planning on it, but I’ve got all this material, and I think these songs are the best that we’ve ever written and we’re just super excited.

How do these new songs differ from your previous work?

I guess I found myself in a very new place where I didn’t want to inhibit myself at all in the kind of stuff I was writing and the way that we were recording it. So, I would write a song about anything…anything I was feeling at that moment. I’d finish it really fast because I wanted everything to be very spontaneous. I didn’t want to worry too much about anything so, ya know, I wrote a song about a blueberry and ya know, just trying not to care about any of the things I used to care about and just care about what I love about music. So, I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be, but the outcome was that the songs are just ten times more exciting to me than anything that we did before. I’ll be working on the packaging and stuff over the next couple of months.

What were some of those things that you cared about that you don’t care about so much anymore?

Maybe I was just thinking about what The Dustys were and what kind of band we were and what other people might think and what genre were they going to put us into — and then I was like, this is just crazy. Now, I hum what are almost like children’s songs throughout the day and I’ve even started putting those into songs. Just, little ditties that I hum throughout the day. Yeah, I don’t really know what was holding me back before. Maybe the idea of genres and the idea of listening to other bands and trying to be cool like them. I don’t know. Not being as weird as I am inside, ya know. Not being true to myself.

Do you think the new songs are a little weirder?

I think they’re a little more of everything. They’re definitely a little weirder. The pop hooks are better. They’re catchier. They’re more interesting. They ended up a little more rocking, a lot of them, than anything before. I think just really letting go of any preconceived ideas about what I was doing just really helped release creative juices.

Also, I will say that going to school for graphic design and taking drawing classes and all kinds of stuff like that also really opened up that side of my brain. I now make a correlation between music and other art forms.

You’ve played many of the different venues in D.C. Do you have any favorites?

Over the many years that I’ve been playing music, Black Cat is definitely my favorite in terms of how they run shows, how they treat bands and how the sound is. The Dustys as a whole, as you said, have kind of gone on these long hiatuses, so our number of live shows as a whole is pretty limited. We haven’t played that many. I have way more memories of local shows with my old band back when I was a youngster.

Are you at all nervous about tonight’s show having not played in awhile?

There are nerves before every show. When we toured with The Bravery, we played these enormous places, and for the first week I was pretty much paralyzed getting up onstage. That pretty much went away after awhile, but there are always nerves before a show.