At 2:55 p.m. I hopped in my car and turned the radio to the only prominently subversive radio station in North Texas, 91.7 KXT, a listener-supported station playing the likes of The Cure, The Smiths, the late and great Lou Reed and a plethora of other artists that glide between genres – from punk, to motown, to new wave and back.

After a slew of Fitz and the Tantrums, The La’s and David Bowie, “Pompeii” by Bastille begins to drum-kick through the speakers. Not quite Mumford and Sons. Not exactly The Strokes. Perhaps the love child of MGMT and Ed Sheeran.

Bastille’s debut album titled “Bad Blood” sounds like an alternative collection of folk pop, combining synths and electronics, breaching on the like of The Naked and Famous. Its percussion sounds like bubblegum pop against the Smith’s masculine British voice and distorted guitars.

Much like Lorde, whose music I also heard first at KXT, Bastille’s work represents the direction in which pop music moves and where it derives- from places such as KXT, where the underground is explored and the subversive, home-grown and insurgent is praised. However Bastille is only a cog in the great machine, and a small cog at that.

While Bastille’s music is likened to Arcade Fire, Kodaline and Imagine Dragons, the band falls short in comparison. While “Bad Blood” has a few incredible tracks, overall the band has nothing any other indie-pop band does not. They attempt to cover all the bases- neo-rock, indie-pop, electro-folk- but in the least provocative or interesting way possible- glossy, easy, safe and boring. The cover art sums it up fairly well. Sepia toned, safely-marketed DIY and triangles in place of the letter A, which became un-cool in about 2009.

The quirky, male-vocal, neo-rock band has become a commodity and the survival of the fittest is in full swing. Bastille sounds like another reductive One Republic cover band.