There are many markers of success in the first-year career of Sleeper Agent, the overachieving Little Garage-Pop Act That Could from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Drummer Justin Wilson, however, prefers to recall the one that best captures the goofy joie de vivre of his group. The date was March 2, 2011, the final day of the first leg of their grueling tour with local buddies Cage the Elephant. This was their first real tour, so Wilson and his bandmates—female singer Alex Kandel, singer-guitarist Tony Smith, bassist Lee Williams, guitarist Josh Martin, and keyboardist Scott Gardner—wanted to commemorate the occasion. They dispatched Gardener, dolled him up in a cheerleader’s outfit—doughy gut and all! —and unleashed him onto the stage to crash their giggling friends’ set. “He’s already got this huge mane of curly hair,” Wilson, 24, enthuses. “He looked like a pom-pom already!” This tour, in all its agony and ecstasy, embodied Sleeper Agents’ rock & roll dream—and that night, they realized they were living it.

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The key to Sleeper Agent’s steady ascent, recently punctuated by their rollicking shows at SXSW, is disarmingly simple: the band members know how to laugh at themselves, and their songs are joyously melodic. (Possible motto, according to Smith: “Live faster, don’t die” —admittedly a work in progress.) You can hear this in particular on tracks such as the blogger-touted “Get It Daddy,” a dizzying school’s-out anthem about growing up, “Love Blood,” a jerky WTF about commitment, and “Get Burned,” the giddiest love-sucks tale you’ve ever heard that sounds like the Strokes doing the nasty with the Arcade Fire.

“My previous band was very introspective and complicated,” explains Smith, 24, who pens all the music and lyrics. (A sucker for tight rock-pop hooks, he cites T. Rex, the Beatles, and Jay Reatard as influences—though to his bewilderment, his voice has earned countless rhapsodic comparisons to Jack White’s.) “So we under-thought everything, and just went for it.” Their compositions back in the day were pretty straightforward, oscillating between the subjects of booze and chicks. But Smith is proud to report that his talking points have since evolved. Most of the tracks on their self-titled album—out August on Mom + Pop Records (Sleigh Bells, Metric)—are studies in relationships, both familial and romantic. And many of them, he adds, “I write from Alex’s perspective, how I think she’s feeling.” This shift in perspective is key to Sleeper Agent’s appeal: While the playful tug of war between the male and female vocals coolly recalls everyone from X to The XX, the immediate warmth they emit is entirely their own.