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After five rousing shows presented as part of Vilar Performing Arts Center’s Underground Sound Series, Billy Allen + The Pollies close out the series Thursday night.

Self-described as an indie-rock band with a soul singer, the group is comprised of session musicians at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Solo artist Billy Allen and The Pollies founder Jay Burgess had originally met in a bar, but they didn’t completely click until they both met up years later at Fame to record a couple of covers in 2019.

“There was an immediate romantic musical connection,” Allen said, adding how he thought, “This is my band.”

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It only took two or three takes, and as they walked into the cutting room, they said, “Why don’t we start writing together,” Allen said.

“For me, it was this weird thing that melded together and really worked,” Burgess said.

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The musicians had already honed their skills as session musicians.

“It makes you better,” Burgess said about recording in Muscle Shoals. “You might think you’re already good, and then you get into the studio, and all the little imperfections of your playing come out, and that’s when you start to listen more to what everyone around you is listening to. The four of us do that well.”

Their sound stems from a variety of inspirations. Allen grew up on a steady diet of artists like The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, James Brown, Tina Turner and Prince; he jokes he was born in the wrong era. Meanwhile, Burgess’ grandma turned him onto the likes of Ray Charles, and his aunt introduced him to The Kinks, The Beatles and Bob Dylan, while he added hip-hop.

“I was also a big Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins fan. It was hard to get away from them,” he said. “But there’s also growing up in Mississippi — you can’t escape the music that came from that area. I was lucky to sit in with those musicians and play with them (at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, about 20 miles east of the Mississippi border).”

During the pandemic, they began writing their debut album, “Black Noise,” produced by Grammy-winning musician Ben Tanner at Sun Drop Sound in Florence, Alabama.

Songs like “Run, Baby, Run” seemed to come out of nowhere; it began with a feeling Allen wanted to communicate when he heard the music come through him.

“If I could give words to this, what would it say,” he asked himself. “I wrote it in a few minutes. I don’t quite know what it is about … but I would say it’s about being adopted at a young age and those questions released from that.”

The song “Invited” emerged when Allen walked into rehearsal, and the guys said they wanted him to write about not being invited.

“We all wrote that together in the room,” he said.

Overall, the musicians focus on creating something they like â€” rather than something commercially viable — and then hope other folks like it, too.

“It always starts out that, if it’s something we want to listen to over and over and over again, well, then, it’s pretty good,” Burgess said.

Vilar audiences can expect an array of influences at the live show.

“It’s a melting pot of different things — a Motown moment, a Phil Spector moment and then a moment we create of our own,” Allen said. “It will be excitement and energy — something you can take with you when you leave.”