What would be the opposite of the average pop record? I don't know, maybe songs that meander past the nine-minute mark? Albums that use up every second of an 80-minute disc? Lyrics that tell a tale so winding and intricate that it stretches across six albums? Characters that inhabit a parallel universe? Welcome to the anti-pop world of Casey Crescenzo and his band The Dear Hunter.

When Crescenzo left his former band, The Receiving End of Sirens, he chose a more adventurous musical path. "At the point where a lot of artists would write a record about themselves -- love, adolescence, romance -- I made the decision to write a record that wasn't really just about me," Crescenzo says of The Dear Hunter's beginnings. "I recognized how boring my own life would be to sing about and thought it would be more interesting to romanticize and twist my life experience into something genuinely interesting."

The result of this approach is three albums (each positioned as an "Act") following the life of a character known only as "The Boy." At the end of Act II, The Boy has gone through a confusing and upsetting romantic affair. Out of a knee jerk reaction, he runs as far away from it as possible. In the brand new "Act III", Crescenzo says The Boy "lives in a time that parallels World War I and it is a story about how a person can twist and change in a very extreme setting."

The music twists and changes just as dramatically, often within one track. Crescenzo says there is a certain freedom that comes from not being tied to specific style or sound. "It's a good situation to be in creatively -- any idea or scene or emotion we want to convey [can happen] without worrying about writing genre-specific." He adds, "There are genres we fall into, or that we feel more comfortable in -- ragtime, folk, and heavier, more spastic songs. But we also feel comfortable throwing in a Caribbean jam, show tunes, jazz fusion, whatever. A lot of bands have a set of rules, things they have to accomplish in their songs, to remain true to their genre. Luckily, we set this band up to do the opposite."

Recreating such an ambitious recording can be tricky in the live setting, but the band certainly doesn't shy away from the challenge. "We have six members, five who sing. We all try to play as many instruments as we can live, but at the same time we understand that being a live band and a recording band are two separate things. When we go out on tour, we switch back to rock band mode and approach the music from a different headspace."

When the band finishes up tour support for "Act III", they will begin work on the three remaining albums in the story. "From the beginning, [the story] was laid out start to finish. It wasn't really detailed, but I knew the big points that I wanted to hit on the records," Crescenzo says. "I didn't want to write it all at once because I do think that life experience is something that I like to draw from and I think if I wrote everything all at once, the story or music really wouldn't have potential to grow."

So what will happen to The Boy in the end? You'll have to wait three albums for that answer. But it will be worth the wait.