Hot Chelle Rae hails from Nashville (well, technically Franklin, Tennessee, but close enough), and its Music City pedigree is an impressive one. Bassist Ian Keaggy might be the odd man out—his dad is not a country tunesmith but Christian singer and six-string virtuoso Phil Keaggy. Singer Ryan Follesé and drummer Jamie Follesé, though, are the sons of Keith Follesé, whose songs have been recorded by Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, and others. Guitarist Nash Overstreet is the offspring of songwriter Paul Overstreet, who has written hits for the Judds and Kenny Chesney.

Given the world its members grew up in, you could be forgiven for assuming that Hot Chelle Rae is a CMT–oriented act, but Ryan Follesé says he and his bandmates have no interest in becoming the next Lonestar. “I call us second-generation kids, because there are a lot of people, all our parents’ age, who kind of migrated to Nashville at the same time, along with parents of people like Ke$ha and stuff like that,” notes the singer, reached in Metairie, Louisiana, where Hot Chelle Rae has been booked to play an event called Family Gras. “A lot of us came out pop. That’s just kind of how it was. There’s so much country [in Nashville], it’s just fun to do something different. I think it was just always in us to do pop. It felt right. I don’t see any of us doing country.”

Indeed, there is very little twang to be found on Hot Chelle Rae’s sophomore LP, Whatever. Instead, the four-piece focuses on hook-studded party-starters—including the disc-opening one-two punch of “I Like It Like That” and “Tonight Tonight”—only slowing things down for the occasional power ballad, like “Why Don’t You Love Me”.

It’s a style that, combined with the quartet’s locker-poster good looks, tends to attract an audience that is largely female and mostly young. Follesé is well aware of that, and he says it is something the band keeps in mind when writing its songs—to an extent.

“But at the same time, when I was 15 or 16, I wasn’t stupid. I knew what was going on. So we’re not necessarily going to go out there and cuss and do that whole thing, but we’re also not always going to be PG. That’s not who we are. We don’t live like that, and I would hate for fans to hear us singing one way and find out we live a different way.”

Judging by most of the lyrics he sings on the aptly titled Whatever, Follesé’s lifestyle entails spending a lot of time shrugging off life’s annoyances, big and small, with a little help from his friends, not to mention a keg or two. He makes no apologies for songs like “Honestly” (sample lyric: “I’m gonna party tonight/’Cause honestly I just don’t care”), explaining that they’re all about refusing to let the world bring you down.

“I don’t like it when an artist takes what they do just so seriously that they can’t have a good time with it,” he says. “And to be honest, we were going through a transitional period with our record label and all kinds of stuff, and we wanted to write songs that made you feel good, that made us feel good. That’s what we went for, and it turns out that everybody kinda wants to feel good. It’s just kind of a coincidence. No one wants to be down, and if somebody can put our record on and it can lift them up out of a mood, then that’s exactly what we want to do.”

And that’s what Hot Chelle Rae aims to do at its concerts, as well. Whatever is a slick product aimed squarely at the charts, but Follesé promises that what you’ll get at one of the band’s shows is basically four guys playing the shit out of their instruments.

“It’s definitely more stripped-down, but there’s a lot more solos,” he says. “It’s much more of a jammy show than you would think it would be by listening to the record. Definitely, it pops on the record, but it rocks live.”

Hot Chelle Rae plays Venue on Friday (February 17).