Crowd energy powers band

It's a slogan on a T-shirt, but it could double as an operating principle.

"You have the right to be yourself," Sheila Hall's sleeveless maroon top reads, and it's a succinct enough encapsulation of the nervy, sing-songy, equally boundless and breathless worldbeat that she helps shape as a third of idealistic, idiosyncratic popsters Pan De Sal.

Sitting at The Beat coffeehouse downtown on a recent Wednesday evening, surrounded by books, bohemes and her bandmates -- fellow singer/multi-instrumentalist Judi Brown and singer/beatsmith Jeff Madlambayan, who are married -- Hall and Co. are chatting up their debut full-length, "Bebegurl," for which the trio will host a CD release show Saturday at The Bunkhouse.

A collection of many live staples that Pan De Sal devotees are likely to already be familiar with, "Bebegurl" hopscotches from hot-under-the-collar hard rock with scuzzy, fuzzy, fist-in-the-air guitar riffs ("Blk Mkt Ppl") to hooky, light-headed hip-hop with fellow Vegas pop subverts Kid Meets Cougar ("Free Speech") to hypnotic, Far Eastern-sounding electro mission statements ("Borderless") in addition to surveying acres of musical terrain among them all.

The songs on "Bebegurl" are pointedly off-kilter, yet still immediate and catchy.

"In the beginning, we never tried to make music that was verse-chorus-verse," says Brown, her forearms brightened with tattoos. "We started realizing that with the new songs they're more like that, more structured than what we were doing previously."

"I'm incapable of writing a regular song," Madlambayan says with a chuckle, his arms covered in even more ink than his wife's. "I try -- we surround ourselves with musicians, and I don't know how they do it."

Still, Pan De Sal is a live band, first and foremost.

Their gigs are powered by a seismic, communal energy, with no barriers between the group and the crowd, who join the trio onstage to shake maracas and tambourines -- and their derrieres -- moving in sync with the band as they lead the audience in various dance routines of theirs. It's a fun, immersive, participatory experience.

Pan De Sal is an activist band -- their tunes pivot on an axis of social awareness, addressing everything from censorship to human trafficking -- and their shows are like political rallies in a sense.

They even opened for future Vice President Joe Biden when he was in town on the campaign trail a few years back.

This outspokenness is perhaps the lone constant for a group defined in larger part by a welcome lack of definition.

"We're not going to be pigeonholed by anything," Madlambayan says. "We just go with it. That's when we make music well."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.