D&D Sluggers

It's both obvious and revealing that D&D Sluggers, the Wilmington, N.C., duo of Timothy David White ("Soultron") and C. Dustin Overcash ("Hyphen"), named their debut EP Fun Is The Funnest. Their approach to music—a self-aware blend of alternative rock, pop and chiptunes—demands a certain lack of inhibition to make or appreciate. After all, chiptunes, the electronic music subgenre based in the 8-bit audio chips of archaic video game systems, is still something of a Web-geek phenomenon, ripe for the nostalgia fetishes of '80s-babies and geeky punchlines.

But in the hands of D&D Sluggers, who use a Nintendo Gameboy and a Nintendo DS, chip music provides layers of chirpy synths and percussive pulses that do more to suggest than resurrect the sounds of some kid's basement in 1988. That level of nostalgic playfulness is a thematic muse for the band, which aims to explore the "inner adult/ child duality of the kids of the '80s who have come of age."

D&D Sluggers' songs layer a current of distorted guitar above the Nintendo madness, fleshing out the duo's alt-rock tendencies. It's easy, for instance, to imagine DDS as a sort of geek-rock Pixies on "It Made My Day," which backs its vamped chorus with ethereal oohs reminiscent of Kim Deal's on "Where Is My Mind?"

"Level Up," though, heightens the dance impulse with deep bass grooves cut by ringing guitar chords. Here, the duo goes for the cheeky dance-rock of Chromeo or Datarock, charging the poppy party jams with a liberal helping of humor. "I'm sorry but your princess is in another castle/ I got her coded from the back of the package/ Up, down, left, right, she knows codes I never learned," sings White.

Co-opted chiptunes have already provided ground-level punchlines for ignorable bands like metalcore cartridge-blowers HORSE The Band, and the geek-rock thing has been done to death in the wake of Weezer. D&D Sluggers seem to have found an approach that offers more than 8-bit gimmicks and comic-shop in-jokes. —Bryan Reed