‘Beach Fatigue’, the opening track on Foxx Bandits‘ debut EP Gold Dresses, commences with the kind of gloriously unsteady drumbeat only the most indie of indie rock bands could pull off. Really, it’s quite fair to assess the EP’s entirety based on that single rhythmic pattern: creaky, slightly lo-fi, catchy as hell. Gold Dresses is decidedly brief (four tracks clocking in at just over 14 minutes), but it’s a sultry tease, working its leisurely way through a textbook worth of alternative and indie rock influences, somehow managing to emerge fresh-faced.

At the time of this release, Foxx Bandits are still unsigned—hard to believe based on the strength of these songs. Each is a small treasure (they’ve yet to work their way around a large one), demonstrating all sides of their collective personality. They can do cute (the loudly mixed, twinkling xylophone in the strummy closing title track) as easily as they can do nasty (the snarling, out of tune vocals that decorate the verses of the surging ‘Youth’), and it’s that exact mingling of intentions that makes Gold Dresses such a worthy investment. If they were to commit wholeheartedly to one direction, the whole enterprise might rip at the seams—on the charming singalong ‘Kafka’, it’s difficult to recall a band more in love with a major key, picking through electric guitar chords with childlike glee; but the sprightly music is balanced by morose lyrics like “She drowned in the river with Kafka / And with a stone-cold stare, he said / The world will burn long after you’re dead”.

There’s a distinct late ’80s sheen here, harkening back to the blooming days of college rock—though Foxx Bandits have been largely dubbed as a shoegaze throwback (part of this labeling originating from the band itself), the songs are too jangly and pop-centric to be pigeonholed completely into that stylistic tag. Sure, there are some spaced-out moments (the wide-eyed falsetto swoops in ‘Beach Fatigue’, the lightly epic slow motion climax in ‘Kafka’), but they never drown the tracks in reverb or ambient instrumental texture; they seem to draw as much inspiration from R.E.M. as they do Cocteau Twins.

Foxx Bandits are really onto something. They’re ragged enough for the post-punks, psychedelic enough for the shoegazers, and (perhaps most importantly) catchy enough for fans of straight-up pop. As 2010 draws to a close, Foxx Bandits deliver a strong case for the year’s most promising debut.