Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground isn't like most bands. In fact, if you talk to its members, it's probably not a band at all.

"It's an idea, not a band," Kirk Huffman said. In addition to providing vocals, he plays drums, bass, guitar and harmonica for the band.

The "idea" revolves around a central character, Kay Kay, a fictional everyman who is slowly going paranoid schizophrenic.

"There are scientists who say humans don't use all of their brains," Huffman said. "There's a part that's unexplored. The part we know works in a very practical, computer-style way. The other side is this lost imaginary crazy thing that can somehow change the world. So Kay Kay is trying to distance himself from the known side of his brain to the other, and the music is the story to his life."

The seeds for Kay Kay were sown in April of 2005 when Kyle O'Quin joined Gatsbys American Dream to play keys. He immediately bonded with Huffman, the band's bass player, finding they had a similar interest in bands like the Beatles and the Zombies.

They wrote music together and recorded demos in hotel rooms, mostly just for their own leisure.

After releasing an album last August, Gatsbys decided to take a break.

"Everybody needed some time to cool out," Huffman said. "We put out five records in five years."

While Huffman maintains that Gatsbys American Dream is "not going away anytime soon," he said he and O'Quin (who plays keys, bass and guitar for Kay Kay) decided to use their time off to do something with all the music they wrote. They met up with Phil Peterson, a classical composer who happened to have a music studio in his basement. On the record, Peterson plays keys, horns, recorder, harmonica, tumbo, juice harp and a whole bunch of other random instruments.

"He's a good person to have around the studio," O'Quin said. "He's very, very rounded."

Peterson, who has played cello since he was three years old, said the Kay Kay demos he heard "absolutely blew [his] mind."

So that's how the threesome was formed. Unfortunately, they're only a three-piece band when in the studio, so the story doesn't end there. For their live shows, they call upon the help of friends, family and acquaintances to be a (roughly) 11-piece group. Through all of this, though, perhaps the most unique thing about Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground is the music itself, which is reminiscent of 1960's psychedelia, though attempts to pigeonhole it with labels tend to fall short.

"It's a very broad sound," Peterson said. "There are a lot of musicians, and we all come from slightly different backgrounds, so there are more ingredients in the soup. It's some kind of pop rock, but that's really up to the listener. That's part of what's fun."

Huffman had another description to offer.

"It sounds like your dad's record collection," Huffman said. "It offers some sort of escape, a sparkle of happiness. We want to connect people to their own lives."

"We really, really want people to hear this," Huffman said. "We really had to open ourselves up. This record is the most sincere thing I've ever done in my life."