aming your debut EP What the Hell Do I Know is a bad idea that the band themselves won’t realize (at least until they see fish-in-barrel capsule reviews), but it’ll make their press handler chuckle if they’ve been in the biz for a bit. Illinois are a pretty good band, but probably easy targets; they could make do with more distinction. They’re four half-shaven dudes from PA of little consequence that will doubtless be remembered vaguely in ten years by Hold Steady fans and few else. (If word gets out, maybe some of the rabid Wilco or Modest Mouse buyers who give those bands their big chart spikes will do a double take.) When they joke on their website that they’re like “Beta Band meets GBV meets Ralph Stanley,” they want to preemptively mock the oh-so-reductive comparisons to follow, that Archibald sings just like the Isaac Brock of The Moon & Antarctica, that Modest Mouse already made a career album with banjos and Wilco’s hardly been shy about them either.

What to say? They’re kind of alt-country, kind of not. They switch instruments. They prominently feature a banjo. Most importantly, they lucked into an opening gig for the Hold Steady at their creative and commercial zenith. Illinois’ EP gets catchier as it progresses toward the middle, starting with the demented (though not quite demented enough) hoedown “Nosebleed.” “Sometimes what you need is a nosebleed,” sings Chris Archibald on the cheerfully strange chorus. The song grows more stomping as it goes on, but throws in a weird, misplaced keyboard solo so bleepy it sounds like the score from Napoleon Dynamite, before mutating to acid squelch. OK, so they’re really not alt-country. But just when you’re ready to accuse them of kidding around too much, out pops the big wet kiss of Regina Spektor-style piano on a big singalong ballad about “my love for you.” Strings, even.

And then you start to think, hey, this band might not live in Isaac Brock’s shadow after all. But why do they fold up, “What Can I Do for You?” the aforementioned meal ticket, at just 2:35? Like online media darlings Tapes ‘n Tapes, they share a lack of commitment to their own songwriting, but these guys are more tuneful, with no premature hype to psych them out. There’s nothing original about the marching “Screendoor” and its pounding fuzz bass, or the way they hang squealing synth ribbons on “One on One,” but they’re more memorable than their modest hookcraft has any right to be, the latter especially with no-brainer “woo hoo hoos” stolen straight out the Dandy Warhols’ coke bag. In the event you play this thing three times without forgetting about it first, you might be pleasantly surprised.