Let's imagine a band comprised of steaming momentum that has been abruptly decompressed and cooled in a folk-rock mold. Its members cut their teeth in art punk and prog-rock outfits, all wound up energy and attitude, when suddenly, in 2007, they came together in a kinder, gentler recording project. This project would develop into the Cave Singers. Later in 2007, they would sign to Matador Records.

Speaking with Marty Lund, drummer for the Cave Singers, this transition doesn't come off nearly as abrupt as one might picture it. Coming out of Cobra High, a Seattle math-rock band, Lund happened to be living nearby Derek Fudesco (formerly of Pretty Girls Make Graves and Murder City Devils) and Pete Quirk (of Hint Hint) when they started casually collaborating.

"Derek and Pete were roommates," says Lund. "They had both been doing their own little recording projects, and then they started doing stuff together. I was kind of doing the same thing. I lived nearby and I knew both of them for quite a while. So when they got more serious and wanted to start playing shows, they got me onboard."

This thing that they had created, seemingly as a lark, possesses a looseness that none of their previous bands would have allowed for. You can practically hear the sigh of relief on the Cave Singers' records, a collective relaxing of the muscles and an embracing of the simpler pleasures that music offers.

But this is not to say that the Cave Singers are lacking in ambition; it just seems that, freed from the constraints of difficult time signatures and lofty concepts, they are allowed to start over with gutturally effective blues riffs and straight-forward, affecting lyrics - the stuff upon which music is built.

"It was notable at first as kind of a relief, at times," says Lund of the transition to the Cave Singers. "As far as being on tour and being exhausted, but going, ‘Oh, we don't have to have to go out there and go crazy.' Although now the live show has evolved to where it is a little more high energy. But I think it's the same as anything else. Music's music."

It just so happens that the kind of music the Cave Singers make was noticed rather immediately after the formation of the band. Signed to Matador in 2007 with a debut LP that followed a mere two months later, renown found the Cave Singers as a fledgling act with an unusually strong pedigree.

Their debut, Invitation Songs, was welcomed into a burgeoning climate of indie music that had begun to embrace folk roots music influences. And, while the record featured a more mellow sound than we might have expected from Fudesco, Quirk and Lund, there is still a palpable tension in songs like "Dancing on Our Graves," with its persistent beat that refuses to arrive at any kind of catharsis.

Fudesco's voice, which ceded the spotlight for the majority of Pretty Girls Make Graves, is quite unexpectedly at home in this folk-rock environment. Its reediness lends a classic quality to the music that suggests past innovators in the folk field. It continued to be one of those take-it-or-leave-it attributes on the Cave Singers' sophomore effort, Welcome Joy. Subtly, dancy-er elements also began to creep their way in around the edges of the record.

As the Cave Singers ready the release of their third album, No Witch, Lund assures me that their sound has continued to expand.

"Like I said, it's definitely gotten more upbeat, but not only that," says Lund. "We've definitely gone in several different directions. There are some African influences on this one, and just some other stuff in the mix. And I think we've all gotten better at playing and writing together. It's evolved into its own weird thing."

Once the Cave Singers start to get restless, who's to say in what direction the band will head? As I begin to hear more from them, it becomes clearer to me that they've only just begun.

The Cave Singers

with Whalebones, Case Studies, Friday, Feb. 11, 9 p.m., $12, The New Frontier Lounge, 301 E. 25th St, Tacoma, 253.572.4020

with Whalebones, Takhoma, Saturday, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. all-ages, $8, Northern, 321 Fourth Ave., Olympia, northernolympia.org