NO knows how to make an impression. The Los Angeles band’s debut full-length, El Prado, starts small, with singer Bradley Hanan Carter emoting atop pulsating tremolo guitar. Within seconds, though, the kickoff track “Leave the Door Wide Open” balloons into the kind of reverb-smeared wall of sound that somehow simultaneously evokes ’60s-style Phil Spector pop, the glory days of the Hacienda, and more recent triumphs from the Strokes or the National. It’s a big song that, paradoxically, comes across as an intimate confession—a difficult balancing act to carry off, and one that’s at the heart of a lot of enduring pop music.

Impressive as that number is, the record doesn’t reveal its emotional core until three-quarters of the way through, with the one-two punch of “North Star” and “Last Chance”. On the former, Sputnik sound effects and a needling guitar line introduce a Carter lyric that’s all questioning and pathos; the latter continues with the obviously lovelorn singer looking in the mirror and feeling quite ambivalent about what he sees.

“It sounds really messed up, but I think sometimes you can lose sight of who you are, and ‘Last Chance’ is really just addressing that,” says the quietly intense singer, reached by cellphone just after NO has transited into Canada by way of Buffalo’s Peace Bridge. “Everyone’s scared of getting older; everyone has those moments when they’re like ‘What is this all about?’ Everyone has these internal battles they fight.”

The considerably more enigmatic “North Star” is also more personal for Carter; it’s about parting ways with his parents’ Christian fundamentalism. “That was a really hard song to write,” the New Zealand–raised musician admits. “I spent most of my life in a rabbit hole, and eventually it came to the point where I had to go, ‘You know what? I gotta start again, because there’s no truth in this. This isn’t real.’ That’s a really hard revelation to get to, because it affects your family, it affects your friendships, it affects the whole structure of your life. It really hurt to break away from that, but at the same time I’ve never felt happier.”

Other losses contributed to what Carter and his five bandmates have found on El Prado, named for a bar in L.A.’s Echo Park neighbourhood. A decade earlier, Carter had enjoyed a sniff of success while playing guitar with snotty pop-punkers Steriogram, but only a sniff; by the time he met a supportive collaborator in bassist Sean Daniel Stenz, he was depressed, divorced, and nearly destitute.

Things could only get better—and they have, thanks to a DIY attitude that has involved recording El Prado in the band’s own studio, a lot of van time, and a combination of sacrifice and self-indulgence on Carter’s part.

“This is the first tour where I don’t play guitar at all,” says the newly minted frontman. “It’s kind of nerve-racking, just standing there without a guitar. It makes you feel kind of naked, you know. But having whiskey helps. I’m a Bulleit Rye guy, usually, when I can afford if. So a bit of that before the show­—and one during the show—actually does ease it up a bit for me. I’ve gone a bit too far a few times, gone a bit out of control—but generally that’s not a bad thing either, yeah?”

Well, no—at least not for NO.