If you're looking to make a zombie flick, then you may want to talk to The Paper Chase about the soundtrack.

The tunes on "Now You Are One Of Us" sound like an evil man with long fingernails trying to break into an eerie, abandoned Victorian house on the wrong side of town.

Screaming guitar blasts, creepy samples, cryptic lyrics and incessant drumming define the band's overall sound.

The troubled group from Dallas has successfully communicated a dark and dreary outlook toward life.

It's not Goth, not quite punk and it might be indie, but does anyone really know what indie sounds like?

Think Thursday meets The Dresden Dolls with a pinch of The Strokes — except with more musical talent and inventiveness — and "Night of the Living Dead" director George A. Romero conducting the whole thing.

Basically, the band has a brutally complicated sound that makes perfect sense in the mind of a psycho killer.

Some bands seem to have major issues with their surrounding world, merely to have something to sing about, The Paper Chase truly conveys a problem fitting into society.

To a degree, the group is working in the same vein as Kurt Cobain's constant alienation demeanor.

But rather than earth-shattering screams and catchy feedback guitar bits, the band takes more of an intellectual path toward estrangement.

The album begins with a spooky spoken-word track — "It's Out There And It's Gonna Get You."

An emotionally distressed man claims that he doesn't "have a whole lot of time, um, and, and, ah man I don't know where to start. They'll triangulate on the position really, really soon."

And all of this terrifying dialogue is surrounded by a haunting pounding piano part.

From there, the us-versus-them mentality begins and bleeds throughout.

Track 11 — " … And All The Candy You Can Eat" — has a wonderfully squawking electronic guitar riffs, with lead singer Congleton delivering lines of nursery-rhyme despair like, "Don't give me that little pig/Cause you know better by now/That not by the hair of your chin/I'll have to blow your house down."

Besides lead vocals, Congleton is the bloody heart and desperate soul of the band, chiming in on guitar, keyboards, piano, sampling, sequencing and theremin.

The seven-piece band ends the album with a brilliantly heavy, offbeat tune — "The House Is Alive and the House Is Hungry" — evoking zombie imagery all over the place, "I want a man who lays down in the street the swinging bodies and children in the wet concrete."

Throughout the whole track, the bass drum plays a steady booming beat that brings to mind a line of the living dead marching forward to execute their brain-eating mission.

If you want to experience the band live, The Paper Chase is performing at Mac's Bar, 2700 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing on Tuesday.

The show is 18 and older, doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $6 in advance and $8 at the door.

Opening up for The Paper Chase are The Minor Fall, Rescue and Vega.