What do you get when you take members of Cheap Trick, the Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne, and Hanson and blend them into a slushie of bold, fuzzy love songs?

Super group Tinted Windows may sound weird on paper, but their self-titled debut record sounds pretty damn good through a decent set of headphones.

Let's do the math:

Singer Taylor Hanson of Hanson, a band famous for catchy, arena-filling anthems on teenagers in love.
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Drummer Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick, a band famous for catchy, arena-filling anthems on teenagers in love.
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Bassist Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, a band famous for a catchy, club-filling anthem on teenagers in love with their friends' moms.
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Guitarist James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins, a band famous for angsty, arena-filling anthems on teenagers in love and pain.
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Sum: A band predisposed toward a gigantically poppy noise.

At first look, James Iha's résumé might paint him as the odd man out of Tinted Windows. But the Pumpkins were always Billy Corgan's band anyway, and one listen to Iha's solo album—1998's Let It Come Down—reveals his penchant for major-key love songs. Adam Schlesinger popped up on that album and Iha returned the favor with guest appearances on records by Fountains of Wayne and Schlesinger side-project Ivy. These guys have been playing nice together for a while.

With Bun E. Carlos' presence comes the imprimatur of Cheap Trick's legendary sound. Unfortunately, his talents on the record are serviceable but sadly underutilized. Carlos never even gets the chance to pound out anything approaching "Ain't That a Shame" or the classic intro of "I Want You to Want Me", instead settling for a reliable backing beat on track after track.

Taylor Hanson might've grown up a bit since the heyday of his former band, but he still projects the same buoyant, youthful chops of over a decade ago. While Hanson doesn't have the pipes to match all those layers of Iha guitar distortion, he sells most of the songs successfully, especially "Take Me Back". And for better or worse, it's hard not to hear some strong similarities between Tinted Windows and another band of brothers currently enjoying worldwide pop star acclaim.

With big guitars and even bigger choruses, the songs all swing for the fences and Tinted Windows even knock a few of them out the park. Main songwriter Schlesinger's "We Got Something" and "Dead Serious" bristle with a joyful immediacy. It's the same brand of razor-sharp pop instinct he's displayed in Fountains of Wayne, and unquestionably his new band's greatest strength.

With 11 songs in less than 36 minutes, the record doesn't overstay its welcome. Instead, it goes down easily with a refreshing absence of pretension. This is clearly a labor of love for all involved, not a project designed to fulfill record contracts or score iPod commercials.

And Tinted Windows may be derivative, but power pop is pop, after all. If the Hanson-penned "Nothing to Me" sounds like a lost Teenage Fanclub b-side, and "Kind of a Girl" borrows plenty from the punky rush of the Buzzcocks, what's so bad about that? These guys have done their homework; now they're just having fun. It's hard not to join in.