Kevin Bronson on August 22nd, 2015

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On the eve of the 13th annual FYF Fest, three scrappy rock bands piled into a sweaty warehouse/loft space a stone’s throw from the dive bar the Smog Cutter to conjure up the ghosts of FYF Fest past.

No schmaltzy synth-poppers or hotel-lounge piano men here — just a high-ceilinged room with a cement floor, PA, vintage arcade games and couches at the back and $3 Tecates. The opening band, the deliciously dark and noisy post-punk trio Shitgiver, wished everyone a happy FYF weekend and said they couldn’t wait to hear “Kanye West rap about being famous.”

The other two bands — Oklahoma garage-rockers Broncho and new L.A. agitators JUNK, are actually playing FYF Fest today, ostensibly to the True Believers who show up early. If you count yourself among them, be there at 2:30 p.m. for JUNK; Broncho follows at 3:20.

Broncho are a known quantity here. They headlined the Echo in late March behind their second album “Just Hip Enough to Be Woman,” and Friday night dispensed their caustic pop-rock with a give-no-damn intensity while baiting a handful of people up in the balcony/mezzanine area.

JUNK, the new alliance of veterans Evan Weiss, Brandon Intelligator, Sam KS and Patrick Kelly, are notable for two reasons. First, Weiss, who still looks about 17, played the very first Fuck Yeah Fest in 2004, when he was with Wires on Fire. Promoter Sean Carlson’s inaugural FYF was a rag-tag affair, but Weiss said prior to JUNK’s set Friday night that the gig at the Echo was memorable.

“We were on tour and had just driven back down from Seattle, and it was like, ‘Oh yeah, we gotta play Sean’s thing,'” Weiss said. “Then we get there and there’s a line down the block. There were fights. A couple girl gangs went at it. One guy hit another guy with a 12-pack of beer. There wasn’t enough security. It was awesome. And it put Sean on the map.”

JUNK’s second distinction is that the quartet has the first release on newly minted FYF Records. “As a side project we have taken on putting out some 7-inch records of a few of our friends’ bands,” Carlson recently announced, and JUNK’s “Like a Cop” (b/w “Destructive Fun”) is catalog No. FYF001. The release was the reason for Friday night’s party.

JUNK made it feel like a party, too, or at least a punk/slacker insurrection. The foursome has more in their arsenal than just the two singles. They had a killer song titled “Prison of My Sexual Hell.” And they finished with the newly penned song “Nothing Feels Important to Me Anymore,” which rang in our ears all the way home. Hope everybody got a good night’s sleep.

||| Stream: “Like a Cop” and “Destructive Fun”