Acclaimed indie-poppers Bishop Allen haven’t quite caught on in the mainstream. But their relative obscurity could change with the release of their latest album, Grrr…, considering they count numerous critics and assorted influential celebrities among their fans.

The latter include Weekend Edition’s Scott Simon (who has hosted the band on his show) and actor Michael Cera, who took to the band after they appeared alongside him in last year’s movie Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. (The group plays their track “Middle Management” in a montage scene at the beginning of the movie, and it appears on the soundtrack.)

They even had the opportunity to play video golf with Cera in his trailer. “He was a really nice guy,” says Bishop Allen principal Christian Rudder. “We were filming right after Superbad became, like, the biggest movie in the US, and all these extras were asking him for advice and agent information.”

Bishop Allen haven’t yet reached a Michael Cera-level of celebrity—nor even that of Vampire Weekend, another New York-based band with whom they share twee-leaning sensibilities and a love of diverse instrumentation. But they’re headed in that direction. Between the movie placement, regular touring, and a steady stream of licensing deals, they have turned the corner as a self-sustaining, profitable band. Which means, of course, that they’ve even been able to quit their day jobs—in Rudder’s case, working for dating web site TheSpark.com, and in the case of group co-founder Justin Rice, as an assistant to filmmaker Errol Morris.

Sipping from giant cups of coffee at a Williamsburg café on a cold January day, Rudder and Rice seem thrilled, in their own modest ways, about the band’s success. Rice says he remembers thinking, after playing before 10,000 people last spring while opening up for Cat Power and Devo at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival, “Hey, we’re a real band today.”

Still, both men’s penchant for understatement and self-effacing personalities seem more akin to graduate students than budding rock stars. Both have shaggy brown hair and today wear a layer of stubble and heavy coats. Rice, the lead singer and guitarist, is the most talkative of the pair, while Rudder, who also plays guitar, comes off as shy and reserved. Though their lack of bombast (and ego) might seem to hinder their career aspirations, they’ve made up for it through a lot of hard work and genuine creative inspiration.

After independently releasing their irresistible, earworm-laden debut Charm School in 2003, they undertook an ambitious (perhaps a better word is insane) plan to record and release one EP per month in 2006. The mostly four-song works were named for the months in which they were released, and the band expanded their sound between January and December, employing numerous performers and adding instruments like glockenspiel, banjo, ukulele, and viola. Dedicating well over 40 hours a week to the project, they encountered manufacturing and shipping problems, and Rudder, who was married in June that year, even delayed his honeymoon.

The guys nonetheless blossomed as songwriters, introducing complex arrangements and fashioning bookish lyrics on subjects like love, loss, and yearning. The CDs ended up rallying their existing fanbase and drawing in plenty of new devotees, and they mailed out some 20,000 discs at about $5 each. “The EP project definitely started a new phase for the band,” Rudder says. “About halfway through, it started making sense to do it full-time.”

“Once we figured out we could write a lot of music, that really kept us going, both personally and as a band,” Rice imparts. “It was a way we could gain people’s interest, more so than direct marketing or videos or something like that, and it proved we could make songs sound the way we wanted.”

It was a gimmick that succeeded on both a PR and a musical level, and it won the band a deal with upstart indie label Dead Oceans. Many of the EP project’s most memorable tracks, including “Click, Click, Click, Click”, “The Monitor”, and “The News From Your Bed” appear on their second full-length album, entitled The Broken String.

“Without the EP project, I don’t know where we would be right now,” Rudder says. “I know it wasn’t our first album, but it seems like that more and more. It’s the oldest relevant thing to us now.”

Since then, the band has become something of a staple of the indie-rock circuit, touring between two and three months a year. Like every band on the road, they have their war stories. Not too long ago, they were driving from Denver to Ames, Iowa when their van broke down. Tourmates the Republic Tigers found them by the side of the road, loaded them up, and took them to the venue. Everyone, that is, except for Rudder, who stayed behind to get the van fixed.

Of course, it was a Sunday and nothing was open in Brush, Colorado, so Rudder crashed at an Econolodge while the rest of the band soldiered on without him. “We ended up playing Chicago down a man,” notes Rice. “We rely on Christian’s guitar for a lot of the interesting melodic parts. Those shows were tough.” Fortunately, he reports that no one in attendance was angry enough with Rudder’s absence to demand their money back.

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With their second Dead Oceans release Grrr…, which just came out on March 10th, Bishop Allen has refined their sensibilities. The songs aren’t quite so heart-on-sleeve, being overall less personal. Instead, they tell stories of scorned lovers, remote locales, and fanciful fist fights, and are full of philosophical ruminations. Also, as the guys note, they tend to have zippy dispositions. “We wanted the songs to be concise and be snappier, less melodramatic, and for the whole thing to maintain energy throughout,” says Rice. “To just kind of keep it moving and to get a lot in, in a short amount of time.” Rudder adds, “The Broken String had a lot of gravitas, which was great and kind of where we were at then. But we wanted this one to be more upbeat, maybe, a little bit less self-consciously serious.”