We Are Americana is a band of four based in New York, New York. The crew features DJ Jess as vocalist and lyricist, Kurt Feldman on bass, Dennis Lehrer on drum duty, and Rob Warren as guitarist slash guy who plays the triangle. This makes him immediately awesome.

We Are America is an eager young band whose recently released EP is entitled My Body Hates Me. This nifty little package is like a call to arms for all other indie boys with big musical aspirations. As you listen to the three songs in this little collection and check out the boys on their MySpace page, you begin to see the irony in their title statement; they’re just two too many eyeliner applications away from hipster perfection, and look like they could be any band spawned on the Lower East Side in between rounds of PBR and games of pool. Yet, their sound is more Fall Out Boy than Franz Ferdinand.

I start playing the title track, “My Body Hates Me”, and close my eyes. The thumping beat, thrashy guitars, earnest yelps and repetitive chorus bring me to what I imagine a night at the Continental music venue must be like. I’m transported to St. Mark’s Place, and there are teen girls with striped knee socks and pins on their messenger bags crowding towards the stage while their mall-punk boyfriends block everyone else’s views. It’s not a bad scene, but it’s not my own.

To their credit, though, they do infuse their generally generic debut with some originality. While the middle track, “16 hours”, features the same upbeat beat as its predecessor, it also incorporates some spoken word that is strikingly, and awesomely, out of place. The slightly blurry, deep voices juxtaposed with a steady beat lend the tune some gravity and appeal, causing a pleasant distraction from the otherwise ordinary material. But where’s the triangle?

That being said, I would not write off these boys as pop-punk-rock lite, which, upon further review, might be the worst thing to label a band. The 12 minutes of music on their EP proves they have the skills, the tools, and the hunger to reach the large crowds their songs are made for. Their three songs are undeniably catchy, but they are also undeniably similar; it seems as though once their first song was deemed a success, the formula was simply repeated for the other two. It remains to be seen what the boys of We Are Americana can do with the more challenging full-length format, but I want to wish them focus and, hopefully, success. My 17-year-old sister needs new music to listen to.