BUZZ BANDS

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It wasn’t hard for Jason Mandell to find musical kindred spirit Sutter Zachman. “Sometimes it seemed like we’re the only guys under 50 hanging around the country music scene,” Mandell says. “It was easy to spot each other.”

Now they are collaborating as the principals in U.S. Mail Band, which had been holding forth regularly at Cole’s downtown and plays Friday at the Hotel Cafe. The pair, who share singer-guitarist duties, recently self-released an earthy,

dobro-drenched EP that includes a you-gotta-be-kiddin’-me cover of Duran Duran’s “Rio.”

“Sutter said he wanted to do that cover and I immediately said, ‘No,’ “ Mandell says. “Then he played it for me.”

Music can surprise like that. Mandell grew up in suburban New York City as a fan of the blues. “That was always the question -- how did a white kid from the New York suburbs end up liking the music of Southern blacks?” he says. “Eventually I came around to country, which is the white man’s blues. It all made sense.

“I just think of it all as folk music -- it’s just great storytelling. The songs are deceptively simple, but they can be eloquent.”

Trying sentiment

If the Hidden Cameras lived up to the voyeuristic intimation of their name on their first two albums, songwriter Joel Gibb seems to have aimed for more poignant snapshots on the Toronto collective’s third effort, “Awoo.”

“I don’t really see it as much more emotional,” he insists. “It’s just another collection of songs, without specific intentions.”

Not quite as bawdy as earlier collections, in which Gibb waxed homoerotically on topics such as enemas, God, gay love and sex, and pagan magic, “Awoo” still maintains the Cameras’ chamber pop-in-a-funhouse feel, with an occasionally over-the-top theatricality that translates well to the stage. The Hidden Cameras play the Echo on Tuesday night.

Fast forward

* Touts: O.C.’s energetic Hellogoodbye plays Friday at the House of Blues, and there’s plenty on the calendar Saturday if you want to work off your holiday meal. Noisy Brooklyn quartet Dirty on Purpose joins local luminaries the Autumns at Spaceland; the Elected headlines the Troubadour, with the fun bunch Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s supporting; and the Key Club boasts an all-local lineup that includes the Binges, Poets and Pornstars and the Prix.... And Inger Lorre reconvenes the Nymphs for an appearance Monday at the Key Club’s Metal Skool.

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Recommended downloads

Download the U.S. Mail Band’s “What’s Got Me Down” and “Rio” at www.myspace.com/usmailband.

* Watch the video for the Hidden Cameras’ “Awoo” at www.thehiddencameras.com/html/music.html.