As long as there have been lonesome losers (and, honestly, long before), there has been power pop. From Weezer, back to Matthew Sweet, even further back to Joe Jackson, and then to Big Star, there has been an element in pop music that tended toward the gawky and unique building themselves up to the level of musical godliness.

This tends to happen through a maddeningly amazing sense for hooks and big, show-stopping choruses. Power pop has always succeeded on not only the strength of their hooks, but on the repeatability of their narrators. In Joe Jackson's song, "Pretty Girls," he laments that the "mini skirt is coming back in style." What could be worse for a dweeb with desires who doesn't know how to talk to girls?

Nick Lowe may have started the rallying cry of a million closeted misogynists with "Cruel to be Kind," where he posits that girls kinda like being treated just a little poorly. Nice guys don't end up anywhere; to impress a girl, you've got to be a little bit cruel. Of course, all of these themes are couched in irresistibly awesome music, but the crutch of the whole thing is this strive for coolness.

Richard Album (turns out not his real name?) is a man from Chicago.

"I really identified with (the concept of) the album and why not let people know what they're in for," says Album. "I've got my eyes on Olympia. For some reason, I've got a stake in this town, and I wanna impress. I know it's a music town; I know there's some heads I wanna turn. It's also this forbidden fruit - this small town, a lot of musicians, but maybe they're tough to impress."

Richard Album (along with his band, the Lifestyles) is a master of the sort of power pop that we've been talking about, straight down to the sort of vulnerable songwriting that once defined the genre. Similar to those artists, his album covers feature faux-heartthrob poses. On the cover of Sophomore he poses as a college man circa 1955, which he cribbed from Nick Lowe and Greg Kihn, who both cribbed from Frankie Avalon and other clean-cut heart throbs.

As a musician, Richard Album tends to find the middle ground between the too-brief punk blowout and the power pop treatise. Album's voice cracks, more often than not, revealing the sort of love-starved boy that Costello, Jackson and Lowe always represented. But you wouldn't know from Album's own mouth.

"I'm already famous," says Album. "That's the long and short of it."

It's a well-known secret that Elvis Costello's actual name is not Elvis Costello. At a certain point, there was a conscious decision for Elvis to change his name from the given one: Declan MacManus, which, as 30 Rock pointed out, may as well be the name of some dashing MI6 operative. Costello chose a path aside from Declan, and his reward was the adulation of millions for not only his great music but his inarguable coolness.

This is a thing that Richard Album doesn't need to worry about. Not only is Album's power pop some top notch singer-songwriter journaling with the backing of a million chiming guitars, but Album is a college campus-posing heartthrob with the hair and the anger to break a million power pop hearts.

RICHARD ALBUM AND THE LIFESTYLES, w/ Palace Buddies and Stephen Steinbrink, 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 13, Northern, 414 ½ Legion Way, Olympia, northernolympia.org