Tuesday, I walk down the hill past a house with an open door and, inside, Antonio Carlos Jobim playing (I’d say blasting if it weren’t bosanova) "Corcovado." Then past some neighbors who were discussing a herd of cats who live from house to house. Apparently one of the cats is getting a bath – today probably. My destination is next door to the cats. The sun is dipping fast as I knock on the door of Beer Wine Fish, a discrete recording studio (location downplayed because of security concerns over recording equipment and instruments), where the Silversun Pickups recently recorded. I am greeted by Eric, a young musician, and a waggling, super-charged brown pit bull and then three much calmer but also friendly musicians – The Shakletons, who are recording at the studio with Loveless Records producer Sam Jones. (Jones made the documentary "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" about the band Wilco's legendary recording of the CD "Yankee Foxtrot Hotel." He is now a partner at Loveless Records in Seattle.)

I am here because Sam Jones is a friend of a friend and the magic words Echo Park arose in conversation. I have been curious to see the inside of the secretive studio down the street, and the indie-guitar Shakletons have a good chance of becoming a significant band. But at first glance they seem like sweet, nerdy kids, wound up, waiting – it’s in-between time when I arrive. They are getting ready to get ready to record. No one in the band is over 22, and the youngest member, Sean, the drummer, is 16 years of age. His parents are not at the studio but they came with him to Los Angeles, and probably to New York, too, where the band, which has toured extensively on the east coast, played CMJ recently.

The Shakletons are from Chambersburg, PA, a town of 25,000, as the front person, Mark, tells me out of the blue a little while later. In Los Angeles, they are staying 1.4 miles away from Beer Wine Fish at the Super 8 motel near Dodger Stadium, and, since they declined their producer’s offer to rent them a car, they have been walking to work – model Angelenos who have only been here a couple of days and never saw the place before.

In the recording room, Tom Billings – who owns the studio – engineers with Sam Jones and a couple of Shakeltons, Mark, the front man, and Dan, who sits on a couch and plays guitar.

Mark starts to sing in a cracked voice: he paces back and forth, stepping over feet, while the guitarist plays along. It’s a micro-performance as he sings, “All I really want is for you to come back…all I really want is a yellow Cadillac,” but the interesting thing is I can see the singer step out of the space we’re in and go somewhere quite far away. I thought the song was perfect in its simplicity, though, admittedly, if it were recorded that way – a capella – it might sound over the top.

Then the guitarist joins the other musicians in the outer room. Mark drops onto the couch next to me, and tells me his voice doesn’t always sound so broken but they had just played a big show in Seattle, and he had given it everything. He says his mother is in her second round of ovarian cancer, and he has been her primary buddy and support and it was difficult for him to get away. Mark tells me that at the moment, they are trying to build a tempo map as the Cadillac song has two time signatures. As I understand it, they are more or less trying to lock in the beats – mapping it on recording software.

It takes them a bit over an hour to locate the spot where they skip a beat, make a map. Meanwhile, the musicians play guitars and drums in the outer studio, where a wall clock is stuck on 4:20, while Mark sings in the other room. Tom Biller works the computer. A friend drops by. Mark leaves the room as his own voice sings “won’t you come back” over speakers. The band amuses itself listening to Dan playing made-up country songs. Sam Jones tries to balance boredom and over-playing: the old-school producer’s art of trying to coax a good performance out of his flesh-and-blood musicians. He wants the band to play while they're fresh, and, conversely, he wants Mark to hold back, save his voice for later in the week when they are planning to record vocals. It’s all new and lively to me, but Sam tells me I couldn’t have picked a worse time to drop by, in terms of nothing going on.

The singer paces a bit and occasionally comes over to talk to me about the band, about how they write songs collectively. The youngest of eight kids, Mark says he has not been to Los Angeles before, and has seen nothing here other than Echo Park. I ask him if Echo Park looks like what he expected from Los Angeles. He gives the question some thought – admitting he hadn’t considered it before – and then says: “I thought it would be a lot better tended. It’s supposed to be really expensive around here. But it doesn’t look it.” He says he is pleased with the vibe around here.

When I ask about the band’s L.A. culinary adventures, Mark says they have eaten at the Pescado Mojado on Sunset (in Echo Park), the taco stand at Echo Park Avenue near Sunset (in EP) and a Vietnamese restaurant (in EP). Jones says maybe they should do some sightseeing, visit one of the studio lots since they’re here, to which Mark answers “we’re trying to [make it so] we can come back. Everything we do here should be in the studio.”

I suggest that at least they walk up to Park Drive – walk it from Duane to Avon Park Terrace at night – they’ll see lights in all directions and the top of City Hall. To my mind, the sight is music.