WHO ARE THEY? A Brooklyn band by way of the Sunshine State, singer Brad Hargett crossed paths with songwriter/guitarist JB Townsend while Hargett was working at a head shop in Gainsville, Florida. Moving to New York in 2002, the duo decided to form Crystal Stilts and went on to build their current lineup with Kyle Forrester (keyboard), Andy Adler (bass) and ex-Vivian Girl Frankie Rose (drums, played standing up) fleshing out the band’s engorged wall of sound. Their first full-length, October’s full-length Alight Of Night (following an EP earlier this year), showcases a moody, stripped-down aesthetic that melds Joy Division and The Troggs with surf-punk sass. With their white-hot appearances at SXSW and CMJ, critics have been fast to crown Crystal Stilts the pre-eminent Crystal band of 2008. “Yeah, just call us Crystal Wolf,” quips Rose.

WAS THIS ALBUM RECORDED IN A GARBAGE CAN? Upon first listen, you might find the lo-fi quality of Alight Of Night makes the music painfully obtuse — the Stilts create a melancholy drone on songs such as the rockabilly-leaning “Prismatic Room,” as Rose’s faint drumming collides with Townsend’s weary waves of guitar. Hargett doesn’t sing as much as moan like the family dog left in the rain, and his brooding tenor remains barely coherent. And yet, the Stilts’ charmingly subterranean sounds have a strange allure. Even if Alight Of Night is technically the worst recording of the year, its pop songs make for compulsive listening. “I know JB wants to write pop songs, in the ’60s sense of the word,” says Rose. “But Brad loves Bo Diddley and a lot of the New Zealand new-wave stuff on Flying Nun. Together, that’s just what you get.”

OK, BUT WHAT DO THE LYRICS MEAN? Song lyrics are meant to be heard, not transcribed in your diary. Townsend’s cocktail napkin poetry recalls Interpol’s nonsensical brilliance with stanzas like, “I’ll love a girl someday / She’ll nourish me in sympathy / But now I’m shoved through subways / Selling subtleties, it sickens me” off the icy “Graveyard Orbit,” which boasts a bassline that could score a pistols-at-dawn climax in an Andy Warhol–ian Western. The centerpiece of Alight, the hypomanic “Departure,” has Hargett just trying to find piece of mind while “converging in the quiet, just beside the silence.” Still waters run deep.

SO ARE THEY ANY GOOD LIVE? Though they’re about to embark on their third major tour, this time with Swedish indie darlings Love Is All, the Stilts admit they’re still new at this whole playing-music-for-audiences-thing. “We’re not going to pretend to be excited about something we’re not, ’cause a lot of this music was initially made in a vacuum,” admits Rose. “[We think that] when the songs are played live, that’s the most important thing about [our show]. We don’t jump around and perform. Sometimes we’ll play shows where we don’t even look at each other, we don’t look at the audience and it all works out. While I guess that doesn’t give anyone anything to look at, at least we’re honest about it.”

“We played a college once where the audience ended up crowd surfing. It seemed really weird for such a melancholy band. It was like, don’t you know who you’re listening to?”