Decked out in starched shirts and slacks after their farcical BW photo shoot, members of Boise's rising instrumental post-rock fivesome ATTN clustered around a coffee shop table. Taking pulls from sweat-beaded glasses of iced black coffee, their conversation vacillated between joking inanity and straight-faced earnestness. Since most of the band works in the service industry, it's a rare occasion when their schedules allow them to gather outside of their weekly practice. Formed in early 2007 by Trevor Kamplain, ATTN has cycled through various incarnations before reaching its current lineup.

"A couple of years ago, I just started writing songs on software, but in my head, the parts would be played by actual human beings," said Kamplain. "Everything is being reinterpreted right now by everybody else, including myself. So now it's a team effort ... I just wanted to make a syllabus for everybody, and now we can all be the teachers."

When describing bands like ATTN, there's a tendency to gravitate toward metaphorical hyperbole. The sweeping guitars, booming drums and plinking keys of instrumental post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai leaves such room for narrative interpretation that writers can get a tad carried away. With that in mind, we had ATTN do the work for us. Here's how each band member answered the oft-asked question: "What do you sound like?"

"Contemporary post rock with an electronic influence," said keyboardist and guitarist Eric Bower.

"We're taking all these sounds from rock 'n' roll and putting them together in a different arrangement, in more of a classical sense," said drummer Nathan Hope.

"I'd say soundscapes. I think it lends itself well to soundtracks. It's emotive music," said keyboardist and guitarist Matthew Ries.

"It's big," noted guitarist Kamplain.

"I think all of us have a huge background in music in general, so it's very eclectic. If there's one thing that I think all of us have done in the past decade or so is listen to some sort of dance music ... I think that has attached itself to this post-rock ambient soundscape vibe that we're somewhat traveling through," said bass guitar and trumpet player Tyler Bowling.

While ATTN is known for their lush, wall-of-sound live shows, the band has taken a nontraditional approach to recording. They recently self-released an EP titled Premixes, a collection of six remixes of songs that, oddly, have never been recorded before.

"A lot of the songs were written and we've restructured them or rounded them out in some way, that's why it has the Premixes title, because it's a preview of what's going to be coming up," explained Ries.

At times organically calming and contemplative, Premixes also leans heavily on swirling synths and looping dance beats. "Introit" opens the EP with an expansive Planet Earth feel, then quickly introduces a Postal Service-influenced soft piano track and the steady thump of an electronic heartbeat. As the song progresses, it swells into a full-on hurricane of crashing sounds, natural and electronic. Continuing with the theme of song titles in Latin, the rest of the EP winds through tracks like the Aphex Twin-esque "Indutus In Lux Lucis" and the catchy "Nondumnon I Am (Remix)." But besides recording a remix EP before recording their actual album, ATTN has another quirky surprise up their sleeves.

"We're a backwards band. We do everything backwards when you think about it. Remixes of the songs that we haven't recorded yet. Our first album is going to be Part Two, our second album is going to be Part One," said Kamplain. "There's a theme behind everything right now, or at least these first two albums. Part Two is ideas of rebirth. It's instrumental music, so it really has no vocal tie. It's subjective to the listener's ear ... Then Part One is death, creating soundscapes to create that image in the mind of the listener."

Slated for an October release, ATTN's first full-length album is currently being recorded in the basement of Bowling, Ries and Bower's shared house. Though the band might lay down drum tracks in a professional studio, for the most part, their basement setup allows them the flexibility and creative freedom to record at whatever hour their crazy schedules allow.

"We want to be able to take time on it," said Ries. "So much of our stuff has so much going on that instead of having to do it in the studio where we're paying hour by hour, [we want to be] able to spend half an hour just dialing a specific tone or going back and editing as we record."

Though the fivesome just returned from a mini-tour through the Northwest, they have decided to put all live shows on hold and focus solely on their LP over the next couple of months.

"We're trying to balance out not burning everyone out in Boise and playing a little bit more outside of our comfort zone and trying to build more people in other cities and states, too," said Bower. "Once we have a full album out, it will be a lot easier to promote ourselves."

Not that the band is having a hard time promoting themselves as it is. Besides an increasing fan base in Europe and Japan, ATTN also won third place in BW's 2008 Best of Boise Reader's Choice polls, behind the Frim Fram Fellas and Built to Spill.

"The Best of Boise last year was a very huge surprise," said Bowling. "There's clearly a standard to get that first place seat and that's being better than Doug Martsch. He's schooled all of us in basketball, so there's no way we could ever achieve No. 1 over Built to Spill."

But one thing the band will have to clear up before they have a shot at taking on Built to Spill is the lingering question of how to pronounce their name. Though the guys admitted that there has been some confusion over whether to call themselves "Attention" or "Aye-Tee-Tee-En," they stress that it's really a non-issue.

"It was meant to be more of a symbol than a name just so the name doesn't give away what the music sounds like," said Kamplain. "We like how Prince does things."

All joking aside, ATTN's lack of clarity on things like their band name, song titles or recording order is all part of a deliberate attempt to let their music do the talking. And even without vocals, this instrumental post-rock act sings loud and clear.

"[We're] leaving an open interpretation by not having a definitive band title, or no lyrics," said Reis. "We don't want to tell people what to think when they listen to it, so they don't know what they're listening to going into it. They chose their own adventure."

For more information on ATTN and their upcoming show at the Knitting Factory on Sept. 11, visit attntheband.com.