The Kansas City Bear Fighters’ latest album packs more than a few punches

Seeing the Kansas City Bear Fighters live is like stumbling into a bizarre theme party. The band’s four members typically dress in either all-white suits or Cub Scout uniforms (lead singer and guitarist Quinn McCue says geisha robes may be next), and a costumed bear mascot frequently accompanies them onstage. The sound is an odd mix of 1920s vaudeville and old-timey folk, and the lyrics betray a preoccupation with the apocalypse.

Then there’s McCue’s voice, which is oddly high-pitched and a little comical, especially considering his well-built, 6-foot-plus frame. One might suspect that he suffered a traumatic groin injury in his youth were it not for the fact that McCue’s brother and bandmate, upright bassist Sean McCue, shares the same peculiar vocal quality. It’s this eccentricity, though, that defines the Kansas City Bear Fighters.

Sitting around a dining room table in accordionist Grant Buell’s midtown home, the McCue brothers insist that, costumes and mascot aside, they really aren’t trying to be that quirky. When the band started in 2007 — with the McCues, banjo and ukulele player Mark Johnson, and guitarist Bobby Evans — its sound developed out of necessity.

“I think we started writing what accompanied the instruments we had at the time,” Quinn McCue says. “It sounded sort of like ’20s and ’30s tunes, which was funny because we weren’t trying to do a throwback thing. It just sort of made sense with our instruments.”

“We played in a lot of rock bands and stuff in the past,” Sean McCue adds, “and I think one of the things that spurred this was that we got tired of lugging gear around. It was like, ‘Let’s just play an acoustic guitar. Boom!'”

Johnson and Evans have since left the band. Guitarist Jeff Williams joined in 2011 and Buell in 2012. The Bear Fighters’ latest album, The Planet Where We Fell In Love, released in August on Little Class Records, is the first that Buell has played on. It’s fortunate that the McCues are entirely comfortable with the cozy niche that their band occupies, because the addition of Buell’s accordion certainly doesn’t give them room to assimilate with any particular genre.

“A lot of the songs are kind of creepy in a weird ’30s-cartoon kind of way,” Buell says. “So I plan stuff that’s very bouncy and sort of polka-esque sometimes, and I’ll put in these little flourishes that are creepy. Then there are some songs that are weirdly romantic, even though they’re ridiculous. It depends on the speed of the song. We have some slower songs, and I try to play more long, sort of romantic accordion stuff.”

For the most part, though, Planet jangles cheerfully along. From a distance, you might confuse the 13 songs with those you’d hear at a church bazaar. But Planet‘s 35 minutes feel more like the soundtrack to a movie about a joyful crew of space pirates, and they kind of read that way, too, with titles like “The Boys of Pleasure Island” and “Moon Rider.”

As jokey as his lyrics may at first read, Quinn McCue swears that there is a profundity to his themes. In “My Nightmares Are All Coming True,” he merrily mourns his impending demise: I’ve been hunted and haunted by monsters/Disfigured and left here to die/Eaten by people, impaled on a steeple/If I wasn’t so tired, I’d cry. On “Safari,” he chirps to an upbeat tune, amid animal noises, about a shooting expedition gone awry; it wouldn’t take much to reimagine it as a macabre theme for a PETA commercial.

“We’re not like, ‘Here’s my deepest feelings, let’s put this out here,'” Quinn McCue says. “Everyone does that. There’s a conscious balance. I’m not going to write a song about, you know, a gerbil that does cartwheels. There are songs about death and the apocalypse, but we try to balance it out. We’re not Weird Al. We want to be entertaining, but there is some depth there.”

Depth, yes, but don’t ever accuse the Kansas City Bear Fighters of being serious. As the conversation continues, the McCues and Buell reminisce about the past five years’ worth of performances at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. They recall a recent girl fight escalating during their set that they agree was “boy-band worthy.” But Buell says they have better stories.

“Tell her about the Flash!” Sean McCue says.

“The Flash!” Quinn says excitedly. “One time, there was this guy in a Flash superhero uniform in a wheelchair, because he just had surgery, and I was like, ‘Get this man onstage!’ And he was like, ‘Yeah!'”

The three cackle at the memory. “And then I jumped onstage,” Quinn McCue says. “And I think a lamp off the stage light fell on his leg.”

“He was in excruciating pain, and I think he had to get surgery again,” Sean McCue says. “The girl thing is stupid, but that’s pretty funny. That’s pretty rock-and-roll.”

A reunion of sorts takes place Saturday at the Riot Room with the third annual Winfield Hangover. Fangirls and injured persons beware, though: “People get hurt at our shows,” Quinn McCue says with a grin.