Death Cab for Cutie drummer leads GUIDES to Pierce Ranch.

The song “Abstract Head” from indie band GUIDES’ 2015 EP Abstract Mind can almost feel like cold fingers caressing the nape of your neck.

The melodic bassline starts off familiar and assuring, but singer/bassist Be Hussey’s echoing voice ricocheting off a dense wall of distorted guitars and pedal effects leaves audiences with an indefinable unease.

The band’s songwriting process begins with experimentation – playing with feedback and looping pedals and chords in Hussey’s recording studio.

“The EP was a culmination of studio jams that coalesced organically,” drummer Jayson Larson says. “It wasn’t like songs were written then worked on – it was a backward approach.”

Larson makes it sound like the effects are thrown onto a canvas and a holistic vision materializes. “It starts with someone fiddling around with feedback, then someone else adding an interesting chord and more elements,” he explains.

While there is a consistently moody vibe that connects the EP’s five tracks, each song varies in sound.

Larson says the band did not intentionally construct that shadowy tone. However, he adds, “You step back and say, ‘Yeah, I see that.’ All of the songs are driven by post-punk basslines.”

That post-punk nod is evident in the track “Get Conceptual.” A hollow-feeling guitar echoes in sync with Hussey’s detached vocals, evocative of one of the band’s primary influences, Joy Division. The instrumentation is minimalistic and relies on guitar distortion to preserve the band’s signature sonically dense sound.

Larson, the former drummer in the indie pop uber-group Death Cab for Cutie, says one thing that he and the other ’90s indie pop/rock veterans in GUIDES did not want was to re-create previous work.

“We don’t want to fall back on our pasts,” he says. “We don’t want to create that poppy verse-chord-verse package.”

But the band cannot ignore a decade of great indie rock as influence.

The track “Midas Eye” recalls the fuzzy guitars, potent drums and experimental feedback of a Dinosaur, Jr. song.

GUIDES is currently recording a new album using the same method they used to record Abstract Mind.

Soulful Salinas-based guitarist Ben Rossett of the popular local outfit, Strawberry Girls, opens.

GUIDES 8pm. Friday, June 8, Pierce Ranch Vineyards, 499 Wave St., Monterey.
$10, 21 and over.
372-8900, www.piercevineyards.com