Known for rowdy live shows and a sloppy approach to punk rock that owes as much to Reagan Youth as X-Ray Spex, L.A.’s Mika Miko is having a blast. In 2007 alone, the all-girl combo released the 666 EP (PPM), toured the U.S. twice, and went to Europe for the first time with their buds No Age. But for five close friends who would sooner quote Space Jam than take themselves seriously, that much work couldn’t have been easier.

“When we started the band, it was all just playing house parties, hanging out in a basement, and writing music,” says drummer Kate Hall, phoning it in from an East Coast Target store where she and guitarist Michelle Suarez are eating popcorn and playing with little kids. “It’s just for fun, and it’s much better having that attitude.”

Suarez adds that the group, which formed in 2003, was essentially the catalyst for how they learned to play. “I vaguely remember our first practice, which wasn’t a practice,” she recalls. “We were like, ‘Hey, I know one chord!’ Eventually, my friend asked me if we wanted to play a show. We didn’t even know how to tune our guitars, and we had four songs that weren’t even really songs.”

Though they now have hundreds of shows under their belts, they’re still just hanging out. “It’s literally just one big chill party in the van,” Suarez offers. “We just sing along to Wipers and Misfits and Black Flag, or we make up songs, new dumb inside jokes, and read gossip magazines, Scientific American, and National Geographic.”

That’s not to say that their road escapades haven’t produced their share of debauchery. Take, for example, Kate’s drunken birthday mishap with a broken toilet in Minneapolis. “We opened it up to try and fix it, and the whole toilet exploded, covering the whole fucking bathroom in water! We were soaking wet,” she explains through gasps of laughter. “We went up to this attic where we were sleeping, and I passed out on this pillow. Then I woke up and looked down and the pillow was covered–I mean end-to-end–in the nastiest hair! Because my face was wet, I had all this hair on my face. That was the worst morning ever, but it was totally worth it, because I woke up half-wolverine.”

Though finishing another tour is the first thing on their minds, they’re also fantasizing about the future. “We haven’t really had time to sit down, smoke tons of weed, and write some psychedelic, 10-minute anthems,” Hall says. “What we really want is to go home, reset our lives, and just start writing new songs and playing really sweet L.A. parties and warehouses.”

The myth of the introspective, tortured solo artist is archetypal. Reclusive, drug-addled, and depressed–it’s the stuff of Eric Clapton biographies and countless episodes of Behind the Music. But it’s not White Williams.

Instead, Williams (real name: Joe Williams) is part of the new but increasingly familiar sect of solo electronic pop acts able to transport their home studios to the live stage with ease. He wrote, composed, performed, and engineered the entirety of his debut LP, Smoke (Tigerbeat6), by himself–and, on the surface at least, there’s nothing tortured about him or the album.

“I’ve been really comfortable with being by myself,” Williams happily professes via phone from Brooklyn, where he recently moved after graduating school in Cleveland. “I like to have the spontaneity of saying, ‘Okay, I feel like working on this part of the song,’ and I don’t have to jump in a car to go meet with people.”

As a debut release–solo or not–Smoke is striking. At once poppy and experimental, melodious and atonal, Smoke drifts through the diverse genres of surf rock, psych, and hip-hop as easily as Williams’ unaffected vocals coolly hover over beats and guitars. In many ways, it’s an album about recording albums, an LP full of self-conscious deconstruction. Williams seems to love the process, and never lets the listener get too comfortable–a bright-eyed pop chorus will crash suddenly into stuttering, synthesizer distortion; vocals and guitars shift pitch from normality to nonsense.

This tension between actual instruments and computers, between pop and electronic, is something that Williams, like many of his contemporaries, exploits. “When I started picking up real instruments, I realized that you can use still use software, but things don’t have to come from inside a computer,” Williams says. “I lack a proficiency in playing guitar, in playing bass, and even a lot of my drum skills have deteriorated over the years, but something I’ve always known is effects, or how to re-pitch something, or how to copy and paste. There’s knowledge that never left me from making computer-based music.”

Williams concedes that a producer or “engineer at the very least” could be helpful when working on his next album, but “only if it’s not invading on [his] process for songwriting.” After hearing the jolting rewards of Smoke, it’s unlikely that anybody would want to.