You could be forgiven for mistaking a band and an album with names like these for something darker and more intense than they actually are. These gentle, brooding Lafayette pop-rockers may place the emphasis squarely on the pop part, but that’s not because they don’t know themselves. Rather, the music on their debut disc rides the kind of hidden emotional edge present in most folks’ everyday lives. “There’s a knock at the place where the door should be,” singer-songwriter J Burton observes on the otherwise wistful and loping opener, “It’s Alright,” going on to note that, despite the title, “I know you’re going to be sad anyway.” The gentle wash of acoustic and very slightly electric guitars behind him suggest he means it—whatever “it” means.

Although heavily influenced by jangle-pop and the shrug of romantic dissolution that is its purview, Dire Wood isn’t just moping around—check out the uptempo “One By One,” which pays likely intentional homage to the Shoes and Big Star at the same time—but the band’s pop smarts definitely make the pain easier to bear. And while it slides into alt.country heartache often enough to make the band hits on the local circuit (they have a banjo!), it’s Burton’s hooks, familiar as they sometimes are, that could be this trio’s ticket onto the national scene. Their edge may not be the cutting kind, but Dire Wood’s particular instrument is anything but dull.