As Bo Diddley knew, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. With their flying V’s, Black Flag and Blue Oyster Cult shirts, and full beards, Missing Monuments look like some sort of underground ’80s metal act but a quick spin of this CD—technically a debut, though it also includes an EP and album recorded under a slightly altered name—reveals nothing so much as classic Beatles-esque New Wave pop, more 1979 than 1988, more like a Shoes single or a Knack deep cut than anything in the pit. And in its slavish devotion to that ethos, Missing Monuments delivers. No distortion, no slow numbers, just solid, if unsurprising, pop: girls, guitars and rock and roll, all delivered with the kind of energy that once obliterated disco on the Billboard charts.

The guitarist, who is either named Boogie Lou or Louie Louie, depending on which part of the packaging you believe, comes with a flat, regular-guy voice and a refreshingly adolescent innocence. Songs like “Heart and Soul,” “Another Girl,” and “Dance All Nite” are as one-dimensional as their titles, revealing either a non-ironic retro outlook or a severe case of arrested development. Mining a dead genre for fresh hooks is rough, especially when hooks are so big a part of the equation. But if you miss the days when big cheeseballs had big hearts to match, the Monuments might just be able to take you back. Oh, they sometimes come off like tough guys, as on “Bleed” and “I Don’t Share,” but that’s mainly a nod to form. Or, as Booige Lou says on “Hot Class”—“Sometimes you get the girl, and sometimes you get punched out.”