Kevin Bronson on September 3rd, 2009

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The Happy Hollows’ debut album “Spells” is at turns exhilarating, experimental and excruciating – as if the Pixies, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bikini Kill and Bis got together to compare anxiety attacks. Its yelpy, guitar-spiked sketches, couched every so often by unfailingly catchy shout-along choruses, are at least nervy, if not downright neurotic.

It’s far too good an album to have almost vanished into the ether, but that’s what nearly happened: The Hollows’ record deal with Nettwerk evaporated earlier this year, leaving the L.A. trio contemplating its own future before deciding, finally, to send “Spells” out into the world themselves. “We’re like a phoenix right now,” singer-guitarist Sarah Negahdari says. “We had to die and be reborn.”

||| Stream: “Spells” in its entirety

“Spells” (out digitally now and physically on Oct. 6), produced by the Mighty Lemon Drops’ David Newton (the Little Ones, the Henry Clay People and the Blood Arm), was about two years in the making. The starts and stops and delays and drama probably warrant a very neurotic album of their own.

The backstory goes like this: Negahdari got together with Washington, D.C., transplants Charlie Mahoney (bass) and Chris Hernandez (drums) about four years ago. The Hollows released the “Bunnies and Bombs” EP in 2006; stamped themselves as next-big-thing contenders with an Echo residency in 2007; certified that status by releasing the “Imaginary” EP in 2008; and seemed poised to bust loose in 2009.

“The last year has been kind of crazy,” Negahdari says. “There have been a lot of ups and downs business-wise. With Nettwerk, we had a beautiful deal, and the two-year plan they had for us was very exciting. It really screwed us because [the label withdrew] at the 11th hour. On the other hand, they could have kept our album on lockdown and they didn’t. So in that sense I have to look at it as a positive.

“I have just tried to feel like everything that was happening was happening for a reason. … I took the Zen approach, but then you have to be a warrior too, and in this case Charlie played the warrior. It’s a relief finally getting it out there.”

The album sounds cohesive considering its songs were recorded (and re-recorded) over the space of two years – “Tambourine,” with Negahdari’s funny Billy Corgan reverie, was the Hollows’ first song, written four years ago. It remains a sort of template for the band: rock-solid rhythms from Mahoney and Hernandez, digestible pop elements and a freakout for an exclamation point.

Negahdari, who already has another album of Hollows material written, as well as 18 solo songs, could probably churn out pop ditties by the batch, but anybody who has seen her furious guitar finger-tapping (on “Lieutenant”) knows she is going to continue to push boundaries.

“I love pop music – I’m really not a prog-head – so it’s been a matter of finding that fine line,” she says. “People respond to the simpler, hooky stuff sometimes, and I have to be OK with being a wanker and having a strong sense of my audience.”

||| Live: The Happy Hollows celebrate their album release with a show Friday at Spaceland also featuring the Boxing Lesson, the Pity Party and the Health Club.

Photo by Sterling Andrews