Folly Beach favorite Dangermuffin working on its third album

Dangermuffin serves up a jam-tastic sound, fusing aspects of folk, funk and reggae to achieve the laid-back Americana vibe that has garnered them a loyal following on the local scene.

With two albums to its name, "Beermuda" and "Emancee," the band has been compiling tunes for a third, which the band members plan to record at their Folly Beach house this summer.

In the meantime, fans can catch the trio, composed of Dan Lotti on vocals and guitar, Steven Sandifer on drums, percussion and vocals, and Mike Sivilli on guitar and vocals, performing regular house gigs at Lowcountry favorites Surf Bar and The Pour House, in addition to sporadic appearances at other local establishments, whenever they aren't touring across the Southeast.

Preview chatted with the band and asked a few questions.

Q: What's with the name?

Lotti: We were going to call ourselves Strangermuffin.

Sivilli: I wanted to name us The Rolling Scones, but we couldn't do that. Dan used to play in a band called Biscuit, so we decided to go with the whole pastry thing.

Q: What makes your sound unique?

Sivilli: Typically drum and bass go hand in hand, but we don't have a bass layer. What Dan does with the guitar takes the place of it. The timber of the guitar and the style that he plays it is unlike anyone I've ever heard. It really affects the core of the sound of our band and it gives the basis for a really unique sound. A lot of the territory we cover is typically done with other instrumentation.

Q: Have you started working on your third album yet?

Lotti: We're writing songs for our new album. With the past two albums, the songs came together very quickly. We didn't really perform the songs before recording. With our upcoming album, we have all this new material. We're trying to get a lot of stage time with the songs before recording, since that's how each song starts to find its own voice. We are going to record at our house over the summer, and hopefully it will be finished sometime in the fall.

Q: Of all your songs, which ones are your favorites?

Lotti: We have 15 new songs that we will be recording in the next couple of months. One of them is called "Big Suit." I'm a big fan of it. It has a nice, melodic hook. Mike actually came up with the rhythm part of it, and Steven has a really great contribution.

Sivilli: I like one of our new ones called "Law Man." It's probably our rowdiest song. It's a story about the shortcomings of the police department. We're playfully saying, "Come on, Law Man, what are you doing?"

Sandifer: Without taking our new songs into consideration, I really like "Martyr Song." It was already a very established song before I joined the band. The three of us have taken it to a different level. We've added an outro to it and some new grooves. There's a three-part harmony and the intro has changed.