As career paths go, Alicia Bognanno has taken an unusual one, the Minnesota native having spent years learning her way around the studio before finally forming a band and hitting the stage.

Today, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter fronts Bully, which sounds like a throwback to a time when Babes in Toyland, Veruca Salt, and Red Five were inking major-label record deals. Based on raw, scrappy, and delightfully analogue-sounding singles like “Milkman” and “Brainfreeze”, the four-piece has more than a passing affection for the alternative boom that made Lollapalooza a phenomenon in the early ’90s.

Bognanno produced the songs herself, something that’s not exactly common for someone taking her first tentative steps into the rock ’n’ roll game. The behind-the-scenes work was easy, mostly because she’s been obsessed with the mechanics of making records since she was a kid.

“I’ve always been interested in music, but I didn’t really have access to any recording equipment,” Bognanno says on the line from a Tucson tour stop. “I remember when I was really young—I think it was sixth grade—asking my choir teacher ‘How do people make records?’ ”

She became determined to find out, first enrolling in an alternative-high-school class run out of a building located, of all places, in the local zoo.

“They had a lot of software programs that you could use to put together loops and make a song,” she says. “Seeing that you could do that, and then sing over it, was really motivating for me, not knowing how to play an instrument at that time.”

That experience would lead Bognanno to take a four-year audio-engineering course in university. When it was practicum time, she knew exactly where she wanted to go, landing an internship at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio owned by Steve Albini, the DIY legend who’s worked with everyone from the Pixies to Joanna Newsom to Nirvana. During her practicum, she started getting the serious bug to work on her own material.

“They would give me permission to use the tape machines when no one was in the studio and all my other internal work had been done,” Bognanno says. “So I would plug up and just play whatever came to mind—if someone was there hanging out in the studio, we’d record, even though I hadn’t started Bully. At the same time, I was writing a lot in my apartment.”

Things would finally come together after Bognanno moved to Nashville a few years ago. Immersing herself in the local music community, she began singing on other people’s projects, eventually putting together her own group. Once she’d assembled a band, committing her mix of infectiously sloppy pop and wiry garage to tape was easy, mostly because she knew not only what she was after sonically, but how to get that sound in the studio.

Bully has earned Bognanno positive notice in the blogosphere, with outlets ranging from Gorilla vs. Bear to NME celebrating her devotion to a time she never knew. With a full-length scheduled for later this year, the singer suggests that she has only begun to show the world what she’s capable of, not just on-stage but behind the scenes as well.

“The album is done, and, sonically, I think it sounds a lot better than what I’ve done in the past,” Bognanno says. “Overall, I think I just did a better job. It’s heavier than the EP, and more personal. And then there are songs that are lighter and just more fun. I wrote a lot about what was going on in my life, both in the best and worst of ways.”

Bully opens for JEFF the Brotherhood at the Biltmore Cabaret on Friday (April 3).