Twee, grunge and hard rock sound like a match made in hell. There’s no apparent nexus between the poppy folk of Iron & Wine, the aggression of Nirvana and the driving guitars of Zeppelin.

Somehow, the Cloak Ox upends this notion. The Minneapolis band masterfully combines these genres into one, making it work by balancing the three instead of letting one influence dominate the rest.

Take their track “Yesterday’s Me,” off their 2013 album “Shoot the Dog.” While vocalist Andrew Broder’s timbre is quintessentially indie rock, the structures feel straight out of 1973, and the thrashing guitar solos bring you back to when ratty, oversized flannel reined king. Yet, their music manages to be an evolution of rock music, instead of a time capsule, partly because of the Cloak Ox’s attention to detail.

“[Broder] has a good idea of what he wants to hear,” drummer Martin Dosh said.

And with a perfectionist’s touch, it’s easy for him to pinpoint the separate elements of each genre and synthesize them.

It’s also in part due to the band’s chemistry. The group, comprised of vocalist Broder, drummer Dosh, guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker and bassist Mark Erickson all played together in the dystopian electronica band Fog in the early 2000s. Erickson and Ylvisaker were childhood friends in St. Louis Park, Minn., and they have played in bands together since they were teenagers. (Broder also hails from St. Louis Park, but he’s seven years younger than the two; Dosh is from south Minneapolis.)

For such a cohesive group, their influences couldn’t be more disparate. Dosh grew up digging Mitch Mitchell and Elvin Jones.

Erickson is moved by Judas Priest, old school R&B off the Motown and Stax labels, and he has been grooving to ‘70s So-Cal canyon music by the likes of Jackson Browne recently.

Ylvisaker resonates with Sonic Youth and Brian May of Queen.

 Tom Petty is one of Broder’s heroes, and he believes Petty doesn’t get the attention he deserves.

“They don’t say him in the same breath as Dylan or the Beatles because his subject matter didn’t go as deep,” Broder said. “But in a weird way that’s what I appreciate about Tom Petty; he’s so workman-like about his song writing without it being bullshit. He takes a figure of speech, and that’s a song.”

The influence of Petty’s tongue-in-cheek wordplay permeates the Cloak Ox’s repertoire. Many of their songs are based off platitudes or figures of speech, like “Don’t Listen,” “Big Talker” and “Shoot the Dog.” Broder has a hint of Petty’s sneer in his voice that comes through on harder-rocking numbers.

Broder’s songwriting is much darker than Petty’s, emanating catharsis through lyrics of pain and hurt.  He admits his lyricism may turn some people off from the band.

“The way I write and the stuff I write about doesn’t always resonate with people,” he said. “I want to … get some imagery in that’s surprising, that catches the listener off guard, or even catches me off guard.”

The Cloak Ox put their songs through the ringer, employing nearly as stringent a process of elimination as infamous perfectionist Steely Dan.

“We make up two songs for every one song we play,” Ylvisaker said.

Most of these songs are created for the band’s amusement and end up in the discard pile, never seeing the stage.

Their choosiness has paid off. The Cloak Ox was voted to play at this year’s Are You Local? show, hosted by Vita.mn at First Avenue. The contest is no mere battle of the bands; the winners go on to play at SXSW next week.

The Cloak Ox has nothing on the horizon afterward, no new shows planned and no new albums coming up. But they’re not disbanding, taking a ride on the winds of uncertainty.

This calculated laissez-faire attitude is what makes the Cloak Ox compelling. Their music doesn’t exemplify perfection. It’s raw without feeling disjointed; the rawness pertaining more to the authentic emotional state the musicians project rather than any lack of effort from them. They play from a place of vulnerability rather than electronic experimentation. This is the main difference between The Cloak Ox and Fog.

“Fog was a thing of our instincts,” Ylvisaker said. “In the Cloak Ox, everyone is way more of themselves.”

What: The Cloak Ox
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Where: First Avenue Mainroom, 701 First Ave., Minneapolis
Cost: $10-12
Age: 18+