Tours, fans and EPs, Oh No! Oh My!

Greg Barkley, Daniel Hoxmeier, Joel Calvin and Tim Regan nonchalantly crowded into a black circular booth behind Velvet Jones, the Santa Barbara bar and nightclub where the four would perform a few hours later.

The four friends in their early 20s make up Oh No! Oh My!, the folksy indie-pop band that flew into the public eye last year when their first full-length album was released.

What followed was a stint at the 2006 Lollapalooza music festival, which was only the band’s tenth show. Their song, “Walk in the Park,” was also hand-picked by Steve Jobs for Apple’s annual Key Note Presentation this January.

Oh No! Oh My!’s “Between the Devil and the Sea” EP, soon-to-be-officially-released on Dim Mak Records, is already topping college radio charts. This includes San Luis Obispo’s KCPR, where the album shot to the top of station charts in its first week.

Despite the rapidly growing success of their band, the quartet from Austin, Texas,

appeared unaffected.

“Wait, wait. What do you get when you mix an elephant and a rhinoceros?” keyboardist and guitarist Regan asked. “Elephino!” he asserted over laughter and echoes of “Elephino!” and “Hell if I know!” from the rest of the band.

The only rock star-ish thing about the approachably sweet foursome, despite the startling onstage transformation that would take place in a few hours, was an apparent off-stage beef with Prince.

Prince, guitarist Hoxmeier said, plays about nine songs in 45 minutes, whereas Oh No! Oh My! averages approximately 17.

“We’re trying to get our set down so it’s just like,” Regan paused to snap his fingers four times, “songs.”

Drummer Calvin said, “We totally beat Prince.”

Hoxmeier agreed, “So eat it, Prince.”

Regan emphasized, “If people come to our shows they see like twice as much.”

At this, Calvin leaned toward the tape recorder in the center of the booth’s table, and, projecting his voice, said, “You should all come to our shows.” Straightening up, he said, “That should be in all caps.”

“Between the Devil and the Sea” is a resurrection of an earlier demo by the group. Recorded in 2004, the band used to pass out or mail copies to anyone who wanted them, only charging shipping and the price of a recordable CD.

Hoxmeier described their choice to put the EP out on Dim Mak as “a chance to give those older songs that we’ve been playing live and are kind of in the same time frame (as the songs on our full-length) a chance to come out for people to listen to.”

“Between the Devil and the Sea” was the band’s first delve into “happy music,” lead singer Barkley said. A departure from what the group used to create, which Calvin described as “not as happy music,” the EP established the group’s fun and lighthearted style.

Hand claps, repetition, upbeat tempos, competing harmonies and a variety of instruments characterize the five-song EP.

The sound is distinctly Oh No! Oh My!, although the band uses these same elements to create songs that are not only different from other artists, but that also different from each other. No two songs sound the same, providing listeners with an unpredictability that matches the playful, surrealistic imagery of their lyrics.

“(Songwriting) kind of starts out with completely fictional things,” Barkley described. “I kind of apply it to stuff that happens to me and I make it. I don’t know. I just make it, ‘cool,'” he said. “My life’s pretty boring.”

Each song tells a story, although its meaning is cleverly hidden with dreamlike imagery and subtle humor.

This humor is especially evident in the album’s first track, “Oh Be One.” Barkley croons, “Oh be one, you’re my only hope,” subtly referencing an exchange between Star Wars characters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia Organa.

Each band member plays at least three instruments, ranging from guitars, bass, keys and drums to less-conventional banjos, accordions, tambourines, bells, shakers and percussion.

“You’re like, ‘Well this could be cooler if I knew how to play this.’ And then you just do it,” Regan explained. “We’re all just prodigies, really, that have gotten older,” he joked.

The group’s influences include Radiohead, Morrissey, The Smiths, Belle and Sebastian, The Magnetic Fields, Morningwood, Echo and the Bunnymen, Miles Davis, Talking Heads, Sufjan Stevens, and of course, The Mills Brothers.

“Smoothest harmonies ever!” Regan exclaimed. “If you want to seduce a boy, or a girl, whatever you’re into, you can just put on The Mills Brothers, light a candle and say, ‘Look at my fish tank,’ and it’s all over,” he described. “Seriously, it’s that easy.”

Calvin supposedly has the best fish tank in Austin, strategically located above a record player full of Mills Brothers melodies.

Over the next month and a half, Oh No! Oh My! will travel across the United States, making a brief stop in Austin before continuing on to promote “Between the Devil and the Sea.”

But don’t expect Oh No! Oh My! to crash and burn, even if Regan has too much fun, becomes deathly ill and gambles away all of his band mates’ Vegas winnings (It’s happened before).

An even newer EP is in the works, although Calvin joked it won’t be out for about five years.

But with a steadily growing, equally demanding fan base, and a few already finished songs, Calvin’s prediction seems a little off. Oh No! Oh My! are on the rise, and there’s no stopping them.