Western Ghost House is yet another band that straddles the middle ground between indie rock and country, enriching and expanding both. I'm hesitant to call it alt-country, which is an awfully loaded word. The band plays as if trying to replicate the sounds of people like Townes Van Zandt, but limited by an inability to contain nervy explosions of spiked rock. Lead singer Jesse Pantoja's voice is a shaky panic attack, in the tradition of Gordon Gano and Jack White. Sometimes you'll hear the band lock into a slash-and-burn spaghetti western, but in the background is always lurks an inevitable crumbling.

Western Ghost House got its start as a recording duo, with Pantoja and Steven Garcia. At the time, they were mainly influenced by singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen and the aforementioned Van Zandt.

"We'd been listening to that stuff collectively for a while," says Pantoja. "It's always kind of there in the back of our minds."

When Western Ghost House grew and expanded, so did the sound. Acoustic guitars left the foreground, and everything became more immediate. Some songs like "Buoy/Knife" even come close to matching the manic energy of Modest Mouse. But this influence game is tough, and it's a bluff the band easily calls. Try as I might to pin Western Ghost House to a sound, the band persists in wriggling free.

I spoke with Western Ghost House across the great divide (or a great-ish divide), from their hometown of Austin, Texas. They're preparing for what they call the "Lonesome, Rowdy and Restless Tour" of the Pacific Northwest, taking with them their fellow dust-soaked cohorts, Crooks. Crooks bring to the table a hard-line respect for traditional country rock, while Western Ghost House subverts it.

It's a tour that amounts to a delicate warfare between two bands that both value the genre, but see in it different possibilities. Come see them play, and be sure to choose a side.

[The New Frontier, Western Ghost House with Crooks, Tuesday March 2, 8 p.m., cover TBA, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]