Led by Dee Dee, Dum Dum Girls churn out pop music that adheres to her self-proclaimed M.O.: "blissed-out buzz saw." Dee Dee formed DDG in late 2008 as a solo projectâ€"the name a nod to both The Vaselines' album, Dum-Dum, and the Iggy Pop song "Dum Dum Boys"-and released a home-recorded CDR on her label Zoo Music followed by a 7" on HoZac and a 12" EP on Captured Tracks.

When Dee Dee needed a band to take her songs out of the bedroom, she looked to her friends: Jules (guitar and vocals), Bambi (bass), and Sandra Vu (drums and vocals). When the other three met for the first time a week before CMJ 2009, it was an instant girl gang.

Dee Dee wrote and recorded the songs that became I Will Be over the first eight months of 2009, and she asked a few others to contribute. Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner plays on "Yours Alone." Crocodiles' Brandon Welchez sings and plays guitar on the duet "Blank Girl." And Los Angeles musician Andrew Miller contributes guitars to a number of tracks.

When it came time to choose someone to gently finesse I Will Be, the name Richard Gottehrer came up on Dee Dee's wish list. Responsible for writing such seminal songs as "My Boyfriend's Back," and "I Want Candy," he also produced his own short-lived band The Strangeloves, as well as The Voidoids, Blondie, The Go-Gos, and more recently, The Raveonettes. Marvels Dee Dee, "I gave him all the rough tracks and he produced them, as I had a lot of digital effects acting as sort of placeholders. I'm not exactly sure what he did, but it's a world of difference. The songs sound warm, and they kind of sparkle."

I Will Be runs just under thirty minutes with eleven songs; a short tribute to love, loss, fear, fun, and the classic pop form of the ‘60s girl groups and early punk rockers. Explaining the album's dark-and-sunny feel, Dee Dee says, "There's an overdramatic tone, much like a teenager's world, but applied to the experience of getting older." No track better exemplifies that sentiment than the somnolent "Rest of Our Lives," a lullaby about marriage that captures, she says, "that feeling when you're 16 and you think you're going to be with your boyfriend forever. And that you'd just die if you weren't. Except it's about my husband."

On the other end of the spectrum, "Bhang Bhang, I'm a Burnout" (the curious spelling being slang for marijuana) spends roughly two-and-a-half minutes musing on the virtues of psychedelics. And "Lines Her Eyes" touches on petty girl-on-girl competition, while "Jail La La" updates the Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought the Law" with a reverb-laden sing-along.

What's with the bipolar songs? "I tend to be an introvert. So there's a lot of time for weird thoughts to develop in my head before I put them down on paper," says Dee Dee. "And it's really bizarre living in Southern California. It's that total stereotype of being super-laidback, this 'everything's perfect' vibe. But you're miserable in the sun because you're stuck. Like, it's so perfect that it's overwhelming and depressing. That's sorta inspiring."

Write about what you know. That’s what they say. But that’s a lot easier said than done when what you know is very, very difficult to bear. That was the challenge Dum Dum Girls’ leader Dee Dee faced when writing the songs for the band’s moving second album Only in Dreams. “The first record was basically the first songs I’d ever written,” says Dee Dee, “and I was thinking nostalgically about being a teenager. This record, it was pretty much impossible not to write about very recent, very real things.”

Very real things indeed: Dee Dee wrote “Hold Your Hand” immediately after her mother (the pretty lady on the cover of both the Dum Dum Girls’ self-titled 2009 debut EP and their 2010 debut album I Will Be) was diagnosed with what turned out to be a fatal illness, and it’s one of several songs on Only in Dreams that unsparingly trace her mom’s passing. Other songs spell out the emotional toll of separation from one’s lover, something Dee Dee had to deal with while she and her husband (Brandon Welchez of the acclaimed noise-pop band Crocodiles) pursued their own tour schedules.

“Just about all the songs reflect the fact that I’d been on the road for about a year, pretty much separate from everything real in my life except the band,” says Dee Dee. “A lot of it is about distance and detachment.”

On several levels, Only in Dreams is a great leap forward for a gifted songwriter and an equally gifted band—it’s heavy, deeply personal stuff and surely unprecedented for this style of music, and that’s what gives Only in Dreams both its uniqueness and its gut-punch emotional impact.

Only in Dreams retains Dum Dum Girls’ signature blend of the girl-gang eyeliner punk of the Shangri-Las, the trashy propulsion of the Cramps, and the moody atmospherics of Mazzy Star, but for the first time, all four Dum Dum Girls play and sing on the album. Now the harmonies have more depth, Jules plays her own distinctive guitar leads, and the Bambi (bass)/Sandy (drums) rhythm section powers the music like a vintage V-8 engine. Best of all, tons of time on the road— including two massively successful headlining tours—have molded Dum Dum Girls into a very formidable rock & roll band, giving the music an undeniable force.

And now that power and glory is showcased by a full-on studio production—while I Will Be was recorded at home and modestly spiffed up in a studio by legendary pop maestro Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, Go-Go’s), Only in Dreams was recorded at Josh Homme’s Pink Duck Studios, “almost a museum in terms of the old amps and guitars he’s amassed,” says Dee Dee admiringly. Gottehrer again produced, this time with Sune Rose Wagner from the Raveonettes.

Only in Dreams more than fulfills the promise of 2011′s He Gets Me High EP, with impassioned, front-and-center vocals from Dee Dee that sometimes recall one of her heroines, Chrissie Hynde; big singalong choruses draped with almost choral harmonies; a chugging wash of guitars drenched in reverb, tremelo and fuzz; and mighty, booming bass and drums. “I’ve always wanted to be in a loud rock & roll band and still maintain some feminine sound,” Dee Dee says. “So even though this album is much poppier and a lot more polished, it’s still tough.” “Heartbeat” hooks with its Buddy Holly-esque guitar line, while “In My Head” uncorks one of the album’s greatest choruses, and brace yourself for the incredibly poignant closer “Hold Your Hand.”

Listen to the slowdive ballad “Coming Down,” which Dee Dee wrote not long after her mom passed away. “That song came out of being in and out of awareness of the depth of the situation,” she says. “Sometimes when I write, I don’t really analyze what I’m saying but the more I hear that song, the deeper it feels. I don’t know if I’m addressing life or God or what, but it’s our big, epic song on every scale.”

Dee Dee wrote “Bedroom Eyes” after returning from a European tour, jet-lagged and lonely. “I was home alone,” she says. “Insomnia was taking its toll; I felt absolutely crazy. I looked up poetry on the subject and found a Dante Gabriel Rosetti poem and the song was born from that. I’d finally convinced my dad to give me one of his prescription sleeping pills and it kicked in while I was writing the song and I started hallucinating.”

Only in Dreams represents a musical evolution for Dum Dum Girls and a personal one for Dee Dee, and that’s no coincidence. “I’m for real,” she says. “We all are. I’m really passionate about this, it’s all I know. And maybe we’ve just grown up a bit—or grown out a bit. There’s some weight to what we do, and a pure intent, and I think that comes across on this album.”

 Dum Dum Girls are: Dee Dee (lead vocals, guitar) Jules (guitar, vocals) Bambi (bass) Sandra Vu (drums, vocals)