The Chicago quartet OK Go is one of several up-and-coming bands that understand where rock ’n’ roll came from: R&B, soul and blues. The result is a welcome resurgence in the art of hip-shaking rock records, and OK Go’s 2005 release, Oh No, is an ideal example. An energized slab of 1970s arena riffage, crisp falsetto harmonies, slinky disco bass and chattering new wave nuggets, the album is a punch in the kidneys to every platinum-selling rock band with a pole up its ass. When they hit the Buffalo Icon stage on Monday, OK Go will try its damndest to remind you that rock ’n’ roll is fun.

But this band’s claim to fame isn’t its music; it is a hilariously choreographed, backyard music video. While lead singer Damien Kulash is happy to travel down this odd avenue to success, his band has since found it difficult to be taken seriously.

“There’s no reason why music needs to be humorless to be taken seriously, nor that it be dour and depressive all the time,” Kulash says. “That’s the product of a certain type of marketing. It wasn’t like that before.”

The video for the sexy glam-rock single “A Million Ways” and Oh No’s campy, paisley-infused artwork reflect a refreshing sense of humor, something largely missing in popular music these days. But, according to Kulash, we’ve all been conditioned to put artists in boxes; it’s tough for an outfit to shake labels like “that funny band” or “that political band.” OK Go would prefer to be known as “that rock band.”

“The Beatles had a sense of humor, and they weren’t trite or stupid,” Kulash explains. “But over the last 20 or 30 years, rock ’n’ roll has turned into a marketing project. It’s so segmented—five years ago rock was in its worst way. There was only a specific type that could have been funded and made, and nothing else could exist, because it didn’t help sell skateboards or whatever. The music industry put all of its chips on Creed and nü metal…of course, now they’re losing the bet.”

Kulash obviously has a personal stake in all of this. Thanks to the demise of bands like Creed (by the way, how delicious is it that Mr. Jesus Pose, Scott Stapp, will never experience a resurrection?), there’s more room for rock music that makes you smile. Hearing Kulash talk, it seems possible that a day will come when rock radio will be fun to listen to again:

“There are a lot of new bands out there that we feel akin to now, as compared to when we were first starting out,” the singer/songwriter says. “Rock ’n’ roll as a commercial paradigm has completely imploded. But as it’s imploding, you’ve got new distribution of music, and MySpace took up the slack, and suddenly there’s healthy rock ’n’ roll everywhere.”

And what does Kulash mean by “healthy” rock ’n’ roll? It’s the soundtrack to a party, not a self-conscious mope-fest.

“There’s so much more smiling and dancing in rock ’n’ roll. There will still always be naysayers who think we’re silly, because we have one video that makes people smile. It doesn’t seem like that makes us clowns.”

If punchy, swaggering power pop is a healthy thing, then Oh No is in great shape. When placed alongside its influences—Cheap Trick, the Stones, the Cars—this music is nothing new, but in a musical landscape still dominated by post-grunge backwash, it stands out like an original thought at a Nickelback concert. “Invincible” features simple, stadium riffing on the verses and tight, high harmonies on the chorus. These backing vocals are a serious strong suit; they keep practically every song from leaning too much on classic rock conventions. On the ballad “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet,” the subtle “oh nos” in the background give the song an extra layer of pop preciousness, and on “A Million Ways,” the backing chants of “one zero zero zero zero zero zero” are seductively clever. These touches help lift this record above the ordinary; it gets better after repeated listens. Kulash attributes the well-rounded sound to the band’s new recording approach.

“The first record [2002’s OK Go] was a total science project: six months of carefully cramming bells and whistles into the available space,” Kulash admits. “By the second record, we were looking for something else. We recorded almost all of it live. There’s a lot of screw-ups; there’s a lot of messiness, but it feels exciting.”

His comments reminded me of my first major rock concert—Guns ’n’ Roses, Metallica and Faith No More at Rich Stadium. During the headlining set, a visibly wasted Slash flubbed the opening bars to “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” What could have been an awkward moment turned into a celebration of rock rebellion, when Axl Rose stepped in, saying, “Well, we fucked that one up. But if we didn’t fuck things up every once in a while, we wouldn’t be motherfuckin’ G ’n’ R!” OK Go’s music may not be akin to that of the Gunners, but it’s made in a similar spirit—if somebody screws up a hammer-on or sounds a little flat, it doesn’t matter one bit if the track makes you feel good.

As a final test of Damien Kulash’s seemingly absent rock star ego, I ended the interview with an undeniably stupid question: “When Meatloaf said, ‘I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that,’ what do you think ‘that’ was?”

The front man didn’t miss a beat: “Beef tartar,” he said with authority. “I think he’s twisted enough that if she asked him to murder someone or perform some weird sexual act, he would have the guts to do it. That might be the catch with Meatloaf—he’s got this hard exterior shell that will basically do anything, but his Achilles Heel is some small thing, like he won’t eat beef tartar.”

OK Go may not be platinum-selling rock stars, but they have a smash hit video and a healthy approach to making quality rock music. Two out of three ain’t bad.