Sometimes a band will come along with a series of songs that sound naggingly as though you've heard them many times before ... hazily, quietly from a nearby speaker, or lurking in the background of a movie scene. Even though you've never heard the song before, somehow it seems to be ingrained in your immediate musical vocabulary. You've always heard it, but you've never heard it. This sensation is bereft of nostalgia, like the kind that may come with hearing a retro-leaning band recreate familiar sounds for a new age; it's just that the music, it seems, has always been around.

Deep Sea Diver has stumbled across this sensation. Theirs is a kind of beatific indie rock that makes a great deal of hay out of chiming guitars and the relaxed yet forceful lead vocals of Jessica Dobson. Beginning as a solo singer-songwriter in California, Dobson made the transition to a full band around 2006, adopting the title of one of her recently penned songs as the band's name.

"I think, when I was a solo artist, I had more of an affinity for writing in a more Harry Nilsson vibe," says Dobson. "Not honky-tonk, but I was more inspired by other singer-songwriters. ... I definitely wanted to take it a lot farther than I had."

After Dobson moved to Seattle to be with her husband, bandmate and Tacoma native Peter Mansen, Deep Sea Diver began to take shape and solidify into a more cohesive unit, even as Dobson experimented with different textures to really figure out just what Deep Sea Diver should be all about.

"For a while, I got off the electric guitar, and started messing around with a lot of different synths and got lost in 'pedal world' for a while," says Dobson. "But I was scared of getting too geeky with pedals. People seem to really get lost (going) down that path and start obsessing over pedals and forget how to write songs."

In Deep Sea Diver, delicate balance has apparently been struck between intriguing textures and the kind of strong songwriting that makes your ears do a double take - left to wonder, "Now, where have I heard this song before?"

[The New Frontier Lounge, Deep Sea Diver, with Slowwave, Dawn Solaris, Makeup Monsters, Sunday, June 12, 8 p.m., $5, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]