7 essential tracks from DNCE's self-titled debut

Is DNCE the anti-Jonas Brothers? That's what you're supposed to think.

After kicking off his career as one-third of a carefully-packaged pop band, Joe Jonas knows a thing or two about marketability. He's gambling that the fans who followed him from his Disney Channel days are ready for something more spontaneous, recruiting a gang of former tour mates and musician acquaintances (guitarist JinJoo Lee, bassist Cole Whittle and former Jonas Brothers drummer Jack Lawless) to form DNCE, a band with a wacky name that's actually just "dance" with a vowel removed.

This guise of quirkiness is a hallmark of DNCE, a band that seemed to emerged fully-formed overnight, armed with a closet full of neon clothing and songs packed with harmless sexual innuendos, ready to soundtrack Sprint commercials and bum-rush award-show stages. It's easy to be skeptical of their rise --their hit Cake by the Ocean is a nonsensical earworm of a breakout that quickly became ubiquitous on pop radio.

Their first live shows were a string of "secret," celebrity-studded basement gigs in Manhattan during Fashion Week; days later, they'd play the 2015 iHeartRadio festival in Las Vegas. This is not an act that's starting from the bottom.

What differentiates DNCE from a highly-advanced marketing gimmick is the strength of the music. There's no better classic-rock curriculum than performing in a boy band, which often piece together sounds from various eras of rock 'n' roll past, and Jonas betrays his passion for the '80s on the band's vibrant self-titled debut. Unsurprisingly, DNCE doesn't care much for coloring inside the lines of genre, presenting instead a zany collection of songs that swing between glam rock and Maroon Five-style hooks to, most enjoyably, Plasticine '80s pop and hair-metal choruses.

DNCE spends the album trying to convince the listener to join their raucous party, to trust that their act is legit. At the very least, you can trust the band lives up to its name, the typo notwithstanding.

Ready to start listening? Start with these seven tracks.

DNCE: The band's pop-music schizophrenia is part of their charm, but perhaps they should've doubled down on the playful disco of their opening track, which establishes the conceit behind the band's name: they've partied so hard they can't even spell "dance" correctly —

Body Moves: Cake By The Ocean may have been DNCE's early hit. But Body Moves, another single, nails the blend of funk and pop they strive to achieve over the course of the album, resulting in a track that Jonas's R&B-leaning brother, Nick Jonas, would be proud of.

Doctor Me: Whoops, handclaps and call-and-response choruses elevate the song's winking lyrics about medical care that's almost certainly unethical.

Almost: Jonas throws back to his JoBro days with some yearning falsettos and lovelorn lyrics on a ballad that'd make Shawn Mendes jealous.

Naked: No track on the album is more stereotypically DNCE than Naked, a mechanical sugar rush of a pop song composed of strung-together sexual innuendos, all of which works far better than it should.

Zoom: Sounding like a lost One Direction track, Zoom's shoot-for-the-moon chorus is one of the album's high points, triumphant enough to overcome some questionable harmonica usage on its verses..

Pay My Rent: The album's penultimate track delivers jaunty Justin Timberlake-esque funk, showing Jonas is taking notes from the more established boy-band alum.