So good it's the Worsties

Next door to Exit/In, The Worsties sit around a table in the corner of a Mexican restaurant.

"That is not the ‘Reader's Digest' version," Jesse Worstell says to Anna Worstell, after she spouts a long-winded tale of the band's history.

Playing what the band describes as foxy rock, The Worsties are four Nashville natives who duck the prominent roots/Americana scene in Music City and instead spend their time clashing glamour-pop with a dirtier brand of garage rock.

Though it might be expected that diva personalities would naturally tail a label like "foxy rock," The Worsties – guitarist Jesse "Worsty" Worstell, vocalist Anna "Madame Worsty" Worstell, bassist Jairo "El Guapo" Ruiz and drummer Nathan "Four to the Floor" Shelton – is a down-to-earth band.

Before a set at Exit/In, the band talks about its developing brand of rock, its place in Nashville and how The Worsties came to be. Odd as it may seem, The Worsties sprang from what began as a twee, duet kind of project between Anna and Jesse Worstell in 2003.

Before the married couple (sometimes mistaken for brother and sister) collaborated, each played in separate bands. Anna Worstell credits her old band for teaching her the basics of performing, but saw no future in the project. Jesse Worstell had a different opinion of his own band.

"It was a college band." he deadpans. "We thought we were going to take over the world like every other college band." The band ended up falling apart.

"I told them that they sucked and I said to Jesse, ‘Why don't we write music,'" Anna Worstell says.

They tried, and the effort was natural, but just too organic for their taste.

"I finally said, ‘Dude, I f*cking want to rock out. Really, we have to do something about this,'" Anna Worstell says. "So we got a drum machine, thinking that was going to make us rock stars, and we recorded well with it, but when you get on stage with a drum machine, it's a complete and utter embarrassment."

Two Worstells and a drum machine made three, and soon after Ruiz offered to layer in bass lines, which the band immediately loved. Still, there was pressure to replace the drum machine with an actual drummer, an idea to which The Worsties were not as receptive.

"We were being defiant." Anna Worstell says. "‘We're gonna play with our drum machine, damn it!'" But her desire to actively perform on stage eventually won out over the attachment to the drum machine, and the hunt for a drummer commenced.

"We went through some crazy ones, drug addict ones, studio musician ones that would just play shows for the hell of it," she says. "No one could commit, but then baby Nathan came along." Shelton joined the band through Craigslist, thus completing The Worsties.

They began to push their way onto the scene, releasing EP "Put Your Babe On" in 2008. Heavy with hard, gritty riffs, the grungy instrumentation is alleviated with shrill and seductive vocals reminiscent of Le Tigre's Kathleen Hanna. Throughout the EP, Anna Worstell teases with her voice, like on "Drop Your Panties and Roll," squealing "Don't forget to pose for the camera."

Last August came the follow-up EP, helping The Worsties solidify its sound. Titled "Dude. Dude. Dude. Totally!" in honor of a friend's overuse of the "D" word, the EP is a swift kick in the balls with a spiky stiletto. It is the first recording to include Shelton, and compared to the last effort, "Dude. Totally!" is more concise.

"The last EP was songs that were written like two years ago and a couple songs that were brand new," Jesse Worstell says. "These songs came from the same timeline, so they felt more in the same vein."

With the same surfy guitar backing in-your-face vocals as the previous EP, The Worsties again achieved glamour-puss rock with few problems in the songwriting process. In addition to the habit of dreaming melodies, the singer often writes lyrics almost on the spot, and the band as a whole has the chemistry to put together songs with little conflict.

"This group writes songs easily," Jesse Worstell says. "Other bands take three months to write one song just because everyone's like, ‘No, I don't like this.' We give each other a shot."

At a glance, much about The Worsties screams gimmick – fashion sense, stage names with "worsty" worked in – but snide remarks and labels like "glam rock" inflict little concern.

"I don't mind having that label at all because I guess we're more of a performance-oriented band," Anna Worstell says.

"I want people to be entertained not only by our performance, but by our outfits. And anybody that knows me as a person knows I dress like this in public." She adds, "It's not really a gimmick for me."

The band would prefer negative feedback in lieu of none at all to their music.

"For a while, no one was saying anything, and then when someone knocks your band, you get mad at first," Jesse Worstell says. "But if someone posts 10 pictures and says ‘I hate these guys,' I guess we're doing something right."

"There will be more people putting labels on it and making fun of it, but also people embracing it."

 "We get everything from ‘post-punk' to ‘indie alternative.'" Shelton adds. "We're playing rock music, and what does that really mean? It could be anything, so call it whatever you want."

It is true that The Worsties have been christened a variety of conjoined genres including "glam rock," "surf rock" and "party punk." This may partly be attributed to a vast collection of influences, like David Bowie, The Hives, Beck and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.