Dead Girls Ruin Everything

First, the obvious: When you name your band Dead Girls Ruin Everything and title your first album What a Perfect Ending, you get points solely for cleverness. If you and your bandmates are refugees from such defunct Kansas City power-pop powerhouses as Podstar (JoJo Longbottom, Cameron Hawk) and Ultimate Fakebook (Eric Melin, Nick Colby), you could belch into the microphone for 45 minutes and still make some local scenester's top-10 list. But DGRE didn't settle for nostalgia or name recognition with its debut. Instead, Ending is one of the most unpretentious, catchy albums ever to emerge from a KC "supergroup." This music-for-the-love-of-music approach, however, does have its occasional downside. Though songs such as "Never Too Late," with its echo-voice intro and permeating hi-hat, stick to your short-term memory like the packaging on your new Mates of State album, other tracks are monotonous for the same reason. To paraphrase Tyler Durden: So your new album's clever. How's that working out for you, being clever?