Jason De Leon, singer/songwriter and guitarist of the Wilcox Hotel, needs some sleep.

On second thought, the whole band might need some sleep. It comes as no surprise if you travel to Mexico to shoot a music video the same week your singer gets married.

De Leon (graduate-anthropology) and his bandmates left for Tlaxcala, Mexico, on Oct. 14 with the intention of shooting a music video for their song "Angels and Devils" off of their debut album The Sacred and Profane. For De Leon, getting married was also on the agenda. Needless to say, it was a chaotic week, he said.

"It's been very hectic," De Leon said. "Initially, we had about 105 people come down and maybe 75 of them were from the U.S. to Mexico."

Included in those 75 guests was Kirk French, friend and manager to the Wilcox Hotel.

"It was a beautiful wedding," French said. "It was in an old hacienda out in the middle of nowhere near the mountains. It was really cool."

That same hacienda was not only used for the wedding but also the setting for the band's music video, which contains themes of "drunkenness and desolation," De Leon said.

After being in a foreign country for a week filming a music video and dealing with a wedding, one might think the band would take a break from musical endeavors. But besides its performances at the Brewery, 233 E. Beaver Ave., the band has been constantly writing new songs.

"We've been really busy and when that happens, we usually don't write any new songs, but I have been able to squeeze in a couple new songs here and there," De Leon said. "We're playing half off the record and half new stuff. Now that we have a new bass player, we've been writing for three guitars and the sound is changing a lot."

Growing up in southern Texas and Long Beach, Calif., De Leon was exposed to music at a young age.

"My parents played a lot of oldies in the house," De Leon said. "Then when I turned about 12, [I listened to] a lot of punk rock."

In high school, De Leon formed many punk bands but it wasn't until 1994, his senior year in high school, that he would find his calling in Youth In Asia, a hardcore/reggae band that drew heavily from bands like Bad Brains and Fishbone. The band played shows for six years, including shows with post-hardcore band At The Drive-In.

"Those guys were always around in Long Beach and the L.A. scene in '98 or '99," De Leon said. "We would always play house parties and whatnot. Their live show was so out of control and yet so musically tight."

As time went on, De Leon's musical tastes matured and his desire to move away from L.A. and attend graduate school cultivated. The band split up after De Leon moved to State College to attend graduate school for a doctorate in anthropology.

"If I was going to move away, I wanted to move very far away," De Leon said. "If I was too close to L.A., I would be less likely to get any work done. I think I just needed a change."

Soon, current guitarist Geoffrey Vasile would move to State College as well. The two began playing music as an acoustic act, but it wasn't until the winter of 2004 when De Leon had returned from a trip in Mexico with new songs that the two decided to form the Wilcox Hotel -- first as an acoustic act and later incorporating electric guitars, bass and drums.

"Our drummer [Ryan Peterson] was the only person that actually answered our musician ad," De Leon said. "Our other guitar player [Kirk Straight] shares an office with me in the anthropology department and our bass player is also a friend of ours from the anthropology department. We all have some sort of weird connection to [anthropology]."

De Leon's connection to anthropology also comes out in his songs. Growing up along the Texas/Mexico border, he experienced many things that added fuel to his creative fire and most of his lyrics deal with either his experiences or others' experiences.

"Even the stuff that isn't about me, it's based on true stories I've been told," De Leon said. "The song 'Simon Gonzalez' is about a Mexican soldier in Guatemala who killed a bunch of Guatemalan Indians. And that came out of a conversation I had with a guy in a bar in Mexico."

In addition to intuitive songwriting, De Leon said the Wilcox Hotel provides a high-intensity live show that makes it hard for local music aficionados not to take notice.

"The bands we're into are bands that go out there and put it down and make you feel like it's the last show on earth," De Leon said. "For us, we play every show like it's the last show we're ever going to play. The music to us is so visceral and the songs, to us, mean a lot. We try to make people believe how much we are into it."