I Love You

”March of the Dead” by I Love You, from Drone, Drugs and Harmony (self-released):

Like fellow locals Ad Astra Per Aspera, Kansas City’s promising I Love You thrashes about in the secret playroom between punk and indie rock, where the kids dress in rags and are given chemistry sets at a dangerously early age. Drummer Jeff Schlette and guitarist, singer and effects-array manipulator Justin Randel met as music-composition majors in college. “We were the only people in Music Theory III who smoked,” Schlette says. Now the two college dropouts channel their 20th-century music influences (chiefly Steve Reich) with their own freak desires, crafting paradoxically sloppy and intricate experimental pop. Randel’s polyrhythmic guitar loops distract the listener while Schlette gradually builds a hip-jerking beat that climaxes in frantic, shouted vocals and disco-ball-slicing riffs. It’s crazy danceable, but only if you’re crazy.