WHO ARE THEY? The musical couple formerly known as Monarch, Baltimore residents Andy Stack and Jenn Wasner borrowed the name of their state’s honorary tree after realizing they shared their former moniker with about 50 zillion other bands. Though the two have collaborated with each other since high school, this particular indie-rock configuration only dates back to 2006. And while Wasner nervously claims Wye Oak’s “pretty early in the learning curve,” their ethereal blend of creakily folky melodies, dreamy percussion and sculpted layers of gauzy distortion charmed the folks at Merge, who’ve re-released their If Children disc.

Wasner and Stack have been honing their aesthetic since their teens. Admittedly, layers of fuzzy feedback are au courant right now, but Wye Oak insist there’s a purpose to their shoegaze-influenced sound. “We’re both writing songs that are melodic and have hooks, but we don’t want to be a pop band,” explains Stack. “So we bring in these other influences when we’re recording or arranging, to take our songs in other directions. For example, we’ll put waves of noise in a folk song.”

Wasner may be a self-described “lyrics-first kind of person” whose sunny melodies belie the gloomy subject matter in her writing, but don’t call her a singer/songwriter. “There’s such a stigma around that, especially being a girl in music,” she snorts. “I want to distance myself from it as much as possible.” She’s been known to deliberately mess with her vocals to make listeners question the gender of the singer. “For a few months, I was a chorus teacher for middle-school students, and I played them singers like Antony and Nina Simone,” she offers, “these unusual voices that showed you could sing in all different ways. I genuinely thought it’d amaze them, but they just started laughing, like, ‘That sounds weird! Is it a girl or a guy?’”