While cutesy boy-girl duos armed with saccharine tunes may run amok across magazine features and blogs, The Naked Hearts’ take on that well-worn pop formula is bringing gritty rock back to the mix.

Guitarist Amy Cooper and bassist Noah Wheeler met a few years back and hit it off immediately. The duo drafted drummer Jim Orso and quickly formed a three-piece band. But three members soon became two, a move which Wheeler says was a goal from the beginning. "We were thinking of a way to be a duo, so once we figured out how to [play] live, we just really liked the intimacy of having the two of us on stage and keeping it simple" Cooper and Wheeler played their first gig as Naked Hearts a few years back at The Delancey amongst a small group of friends, and the experience of playing live sealed the band’s fate. "It was awesome to just kind of debut the new project," Wheeler says of the band’s first show. "For us, Naked Hearts was the first time we had deeply collaborated with someone else and just wanted to keep doing it—and here we are."

Debuting with the Bees Knees EP in 2009 and a full album, Mass Hysteria, last year, Wheeler and Cooper are now nearly finished with a new collection of music that they’re both eager to hit the stage with. The band created its latest effort at a friend’s home in Northern California, which Wheeler reveals influenced the new batch of jams both technically and stylistically. Compared to the recording process for Mass Hysteria, a series of pleading love songs with powerful guitar riffs and thumping-drums recorded at Brooklyn’s Vacation Island Recording Studio, this new album has a spacious, atmospheric feel. "We’ve been in the woods basically, north of San Francisco," says Wheeler. "So, being around less people and being surrounded by nature has definitely changed our music."

The upcoming album will also move in the direction of a more danceable, poppy vibe. Recorded on an 8-track—a move which allowed the two to be extra-creative and gives their new sound a "raw and simple" quality—the soon-to-be finished record is being self-released, which Cooper and Wheeler say will show a broader musical range.

The writing process for Naked Hearts is one of an impulsive and synergistic nature. "We apply different approaches, and that’s why we like writing with each other," Wheeler affirms. "We both bring something different to the table, and with some songs we’ll be spontaneously playing and kind of jamming out and collaborating in that way, [while] with other songs one of us will write the bulk of a song and the other one will help smooth it out and fine tune it." Both of the Naked Hearts agree that they look up to a variety of songwriters, including Neil Young and The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs, but while Wheeler finds inspiration through the pop-oriented spectrum of songwriting, Cooper looks up to rockers like Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith.

Subsequently, Naked Hearts’ music is filled with raw, edgy tones that showcase alt-rock-heavy rhythms and tender moments, featuring mellifluous boy-girl harmonies and softly strummed instruments. Grinding guitar riffs and a pulsing percussion can be heard throughout Mass Hysteria, with striking bass lines peppering tracks like "Call Me." Boisterous moments of thrashing instruments and mellow vocals—what the band does best—are apparent on "Like I Do," which boasts sweet lyrics like "Any time you turn away/ I just want to hear you say/ Don’t believe what’s in my eyes/ Try and make this feeling never die."

If Mass Hysteria is any indication of what the more pop-driven musical future will hold for the Naked Hearts, then we have a feeling things are just getting started. 

>> The Naked Hearts 

May 19, Glasslands, 289 Kent Ave. (betw. S. 1st & S. 2nd Sts.), 

Brooklyn, 718-599-1450; 8, $10.

The brainchild of Stitelman,
Neighbors manifested in 2009 when Jacksonknife, the band he was previously part
of, was on the brink of breaking up. A departure from his past band’s alt-country
rock sound, Neighbors takes listeners off the beaten indie-rock path and onto
an experimental route combining various instruments, like keys, violins and
drums with poppy synths. “When I started doing the Neighbors stuff, I didn’t
want to make rock music so much anymore,” Stitelman says. “So I just started
making electronic music instead.”

Recording the four-track Hooligans almost entirely on his own in his Williamsburg
apartment, Stitelman reached out to longtime friend Matt Rubin, who helps runs
San Francisco’s Paper Brigade Records. Meeting at school in San Francisco where
both were studying photography, a passion that Stitelman still pursues today,
the two have remained friends throughout the years and decided to join forces.

Another friendship-fueled
collaboration came in the form of mixing and producing the EP. Stitelman
recruited renowned engineer, producer and his “oldest friend” Kyle Johnson, who
has worked with Modest Mouse, The Hives and Rogue Wave in the past. “That guy
is a genius,” Stitelman says about working with Johnson, who he’s known since
the third grade and played music with before. “He’s really good at what he
does, so I learned most of what I know from just watching him.” And while
Stitelman recorded most of Hooligans himself, it wouldn’t have been complete without the help of his five
bandmates.

Meeting Evan Johnson, Steph McCarthy,
Anne Miner and Eric Beug through friends and finding Brian Harney via a
Craigslist ad for a violin player, the group came together toward the end of
the recording process and put the finishing touches on the album together.

With a surprisingly limited
electronic background, the Neighbors mastermind relied on his musical tastes
and the Harry Potter franchise for motivation to complete this record.
Listening to a variety of indie rock and looking to old-school idols including
Jimmy Dorsey and Dean Martin, a pair whose music Stitelman would “rather make,”
and finding his muse through J.K. Rowling’s magical Hogwarts-centered series, Hooligans began to take shape. “Actually it’s funny the
movies I was watching the most and books I was probably reading the most was
Harry Potter,” he reminisces. “I distinctly wanted the record to sound more
fantastical in a way that those movies and books seemed, and for it to sort of
be very bubbly or colorful…w which I guess isn’t very cool.”

Whether he believes his
bewitching inspiration was cool or not, Neighbors blends haunting vocals,
exploding synths and wondrous melodies
reminiscent of the mythical elements that the films offer. Enforcing a
song evolution by meticulously going through each track from the lyrics to the
melodies, the creative process for Stitelman is a slow, but rewarding one. “In
the beginning you’re not really comfortable with the song, you don’t really
know it yet,” he explains. “The melody doesn’t stick, it’s not sort of
ingrained in your head, yet. But the better you can pick apart your stuff and
know it before you call it finished, the better it’ll be in the end.”

And while this method of
revisiting his work and improving it has remained a constant, the manor in which
songs are created varies. While the electric guitar and percussive tinged track
“I’m A Building, I’m On Fire” gradually
transpired and went through many different incarnations, the idea for the
enchanting, accordion-laced “Hooligans,” on the other hand, was randomly
stumbled upon. “I was just sort of sitting down and screwing around, and not
having any idea of what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “I just started messing
around with the accordion line, and out of that, sort of built that song.” “Hooligans” boasts softly sung lyrics
about not being “100% honest with people
and how that sort of manifests in your daily relationships,” multi-instrumental
orchestrations and electronic beats, all of which are elements spread
throughout the EP.

Pairing lush, other worldly
melodies with very real and relatable lyrics centered around themes of
withdrawal and relationships, Neighbors is making its mark in Brooklyn and has
plans to hit Philadelphia, Boston and D.C. in the upcoming months, with hopes
of expanding their fan base, playing different venues and seeing what the music
scenes there have to offer. But for now, Stitelman will continue to work on his
music in Brooklyn, the place he feels most at home, with his band of Neighbors.

For most of his life, Payseur called Charlotte, N.C., home, growing up in a musical household and learning how to play music from a young age. “My parents are musicians and my grandfather is a musician, so it was just kind of, you know, an option growing up,” he says. “There were always instruments around the house, so I just decided to pick it up, and just kept on with it.” The “it” Payseur refers to are the guitar and bass, explaining that he later experimented with the drums as a teenager, all of which would help him record later on under the moniker of Beach Fossils.

Before bidding his hometown adieu and moving to Brooklyn two years ago, Payseur considered joining a Taoist Monastery at one point. “I didn’t know what to do, and I came to the conclusion that a Taoist Monastery would be a contradiction in itself,” he says of the decision. “And the more Taoist thing to do, I suppose, would be to challenge myself and move to the busiest city in the country.” So challenge himself he did, coming to New York with the sole purpose of pursuing his passion: music.

“I really didn’t know anybody here to play music with,” Payseur explains of when he first arrived. “And I just really wanted to do music, that was the main reason I came here.” Determined to be exhausted by his passions, Payseur took matters into his own hands, drawing from his musical talents to become a solo act. He recorded demos by himself and wishfully sent them out, a move that led to lasting relationships with the local labels Woodsist and Captured Tracks. After receiving “a lot of positive feedback” and booking shows, Payseur soon realized he needed a band. Enter guitarist Chris Burke, bassist John Pena and drummer Tommy Lucas. “I met them and they all had solo projects that I thought were really good, and that I thought would be a good fit for the band.”

Now a four-piece, Beach Fossils creates dreamy, swoon-inducing melodies with a backdrop of tranquil, yet complex lyrics that encompass their author. “They are all very personal,” Payseur reveals of the 11 tracks that comprise Beach Fossils’ self-titled debut. “Most of them are actual experiences. They’re not really made up stories or anything. I feel very exposed with what I’ve made, but at the same time I feel it’s important to not censor yourself.”

Influenced by the combination of new wave, post-punk, free jazz and 1960s psychedelic tunes that constantly circulate through Payseur’s headphones, and drawing on his poetry background to help write lyrics, Beach Fossils is composed of emotionally layered tracks that blow past the “summer band” label the quartet has unfairly been given. An assumption Payseur rightfully attributes to “convenience” and a lack of observation.

The recording and creative process for Beach Fossils comes naturally and without over-analyzing and nitpicking. Through stream of consciousness, something Payseur attributes to studying Dadaism, the troupe has sessions in which it is immersed in their art. “We hardly even talk,” he says of the sittings. “We just sit down with the instruments and a song will come out. We’ll go through all the different parts, and then we’ll come back and try to arrange it afterwards. It’s usually really quick, we can come up with a new song in a sitting.”

One such song is “Twelve Roses,” an infectiously bittersweet, percussive-driven track that goes through the motions of one of Payseur’s relationships, from beginning to end. With jangly guitars and hazy vocals, the track, like much of the album, provides a contrast of up-tempo, sunny beats to mellow and sometimes melancholy lyrics, proving that with Beach Fossils, Payseur is not only an advocate of the arts, but an artist himself.

>>BEACH FOSSILS June 19, Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Essex & Ludlow Sts.), 212-260-4700; 8, $12.