Cage the Elephant has made no secret of the fact that its stellar second album, Thank You Happy Birthday, was heavily influenced by some of the giants of ’90s alt-rock. Ironically, it was after moving to London, England, from Bowling Green, Kentucky, following their self-titled 2009 debut that the group’s members ended up being turned onto iconic American acts like Pavement, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth.

“In Bowling Green there was a college radio station that played mostly emo music, which we didn’t listen to,” guitarist Brad Shultz notes, on the line from his adopted hometown of Nashville. “There was also a classic rock station, which was great, ’cause it played music that seemed pure: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. But they aren’t the only bands out there. All the alternative bands that we would end up discovering were just as good. That played a big part in inspiring us and getting us excited about music.”

At the moment, though, Cage the Elephant is more jacked about what’s happening today than when Kurt and Courtney were the king and queen of alt rock.

“In the past, we found ourselves looking for inspiration with older bands,” Shultz says. “Now we’re starting to realize that there’s something really happening in music nowadays. It seems to be at a turning point where something special is going to happen—we all feel it. We’re discovering all these new bands that are really inspiring to us.”

The guitarist is not only happy to rattle of a list of those acts, but in fact insists. Groups that the members of Cage the Elephant consider themselves in awe of include, but are not limited to, the following: Let’s Wrestle, Manchester Orchestra, the Screaming Tea Party, Morning Teleportation, Sleeper Agent, and Schools.

Those acts—the last three of which are from his original hometown—should also consider themselves blessed to be name-checked by Cage the Elephant, whose Thank You Happy Birthday debuted at number two on Billboard. If something big is about to happen in whatever qualifies as alternative rock these days, the quintet—which includes guitarist Lincoln Parish, bassist Daniel Tichenor, drummer Jared Champion, and Shultz’s brother Matthew on lead vocals—is leading the charge.

With Thank You Happy Birthday, the band has created a rarity at a time when glossy pop dominates the charts, namely a maximum-overdive rock record powered by an insanely inventive guitar sound. But Cage the Elephant isn’t completely shock-and-awe all of the time. Thank You Happy Birthday’s unbeatable title track, “Always Something”, mixes and matches surf-spy six-string with the kind of slurred white-boy hip-hop delivery we haven’t heard since Beck’s “Loser”, while “Aberdeen” picks up a ’90s freak-pop torch first lit by the likes of Tripping Daisy and the Flaming Lips.

It’s when you crank up tracks like “Sabertooth Tiger” and “Sell Yourself”, however, that you need to be prepared to duck and cover. In the tradition of acts like Hí¼sker Dí¼, Sonic Youth, and Black Flag, Cage the Elephant has come up with the kind of guitar sound that makes you think maybe you actually haven’t heard it all before.

“It’s always the things that we stumble upon while being totally out of our element and having no idea what we’re doing that leads to the best kind of sounds,” Shultz says. “Usually what we do is get a bunch of pedals and then mess everything up. We use pedals exactly the way that they are not supposed to be used, and I think there’s a purity and an honesty in that.”

Cage the Elephant opens for the Black Keys at Deer Lake Park on Monday (June 27).