The first time I heard the music of Fountains of Wayne, or at least one half of Fountains of Wayne, I had no idea who they were. It was the title song of Tom Hanks’ directorial debut, That Thing You Do!, a burst of bubble gum pop that perfectly created the sound of the Beatles-wannabes chronicled in the film. That was in 1996, and it wouldn’t be until three years later that I caught on to the band and discovered they were behind that tune.

1996 also marked the release of Fountains of Wayne’s self-titled debut album, a tight bright collection that perfectly introduced their sound and sensibility. I’ll spend this week featuring songs from that album and the four that followed.

Fountains of Wayne are, essentially, Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood. A couple of other people fill out the band but Schlesinger and Collingwood do all the writing and singing. They follow the Lennon/McCartney example of sharing songwriting credit on all of their songs even though they generally each write and sing their own tunes.

Their style is straight-up power pop, with some lovely acoustic ballads thrown in for good measure. At their best, which is often, they are peerless at crafting 3-minute confections. You won’t hear a rock opera or Radiohead-style art music pretentiousness out of these guys. Just pure pop pleasure… it’s that thing they do.