Dance-punk duo, Matt and Kim, hits Fester’s stage

With just a drum set, a keyboard and energy abounding, alternative dance-punk duo Matt and Kim arrive in Bloomington once again to deliver a signature set at 9 p.m. today on the Uncle Fester’s stage.

The Brooklyn-area band will be joined by punk minimalists Best Fwends, a Texas-based twosome known for performing energetic shows with only vocals and an iPod to play their backing track.

In the final leg of their November North American tour and touting material from their recently recorded sophomore album “Grand,” Matt and Kim will fill their set with both old and new songs. Their recently released single “Daylight” has since found its way onto the College Music Journal Radio 200 chart.

“We just played in Detroit, and I just couldn’t believe how everyone knew the words to it already,” said singer and keyboardist Matt Johnson. “You don’t need something on a physical release these days to have people know it.”

Since the release of their first, self-titled album in 2006, which garnered press from the likes of Spin magazine and Pitchfork Media, the duo continues to punch out party power anthems on its latest effort, which arrives in stores Jan. 20, 2009. Before releasing “Daylight” in October, the band unveiled “Good Ol’ Fashioned Nightmare” this past summer, and they plan on releasing at least one more song before the album hits shelves.

“I believe before the recording, before it’s released, there will be another song, which is actually the first song we’ve done that Kim sings on,” Johnson said. “It’s a big change for us. It’s been years of me convincing her, or trying to convince her, to sing.”

The song “Lessons Learned” marks just another step in the band’s musical progression. Matt and Kim learned to play their instruments the year they wrote their first songs, and they recorded their first album in a mere nine days, Johnson said. The duo took the opposite approach for “Grand” and made it less about genre and more about the music’s vibe, he said.

“When you record something in two weeks or in a month straight, it’s one very finite moment in your life,” Johnson said. “If you spread it out over the year, it kind of encompasses a lot more.”

Traveling to Johnson’s childhood home in Vermont between incessant touring, Matt and Kim took their time in fleshing out the entire album, a process Johnson said is a brutal one. Recording the album by themselves, the twosome paid particular attention to detail during its creation.

“We’ve spent nine or 10 months on this recording,” Johnson said. “It’s got to do exactly what we want it to do. It’s making the songs the best they can be recorded and the best they can be live.”

New material in hand, the band will continue on its successful tour until early December, but its stop in Bloomington is a special one – it was no question the town had to be on the tour schedule, Johnson said. A city the band has continued to visit since its first tour, Bloomington is renowned for its communal music scene and former underground staples such as Plan-It-X Records, he said.

“In Bloomington, people won’t just follow the hype or what their friends like,” Johnson said about the city’s music scene. “It’s more of a community effort. Sometimes towns that aren’t the big cities, you can really develop something that is much more personal. It becomes like a very strong thing that more people will just keep coming back for. They won’t just go because it was what was cool at this moment. It’s something we can all do together.”