Or, if you're Nate Ruess and Sam Means, the Phoenix-area duo that calls itself the Format, the story goes something like this: Write a song. Get it on the radio. Sign to Elektra Records. Screw the rest of that noise. Of course, it helps that the song, aptly titled "The First Single," is the right thing for right now, an acoustic-fueled post-graduation anthem for the program directors to slot between Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World. Makes sense, then, that Jimmy Eat World's Jim Adkins has issued the group's debut EP, titled simply EP, on Western Tread Recordings, the label he started with longtime Phoenix promoter Charlie Levy. (The Format's Elektra bow hits later this year.) The rest of EP is solid--especially "Even Better Yet"; with it's Strummer strums, it could have been titled "Phoenix Calling." But it's got nothing on "The First Single," which has a hell-yeah chorus that makes a smile start in your heart--"So let's cause a scene/Clap our hands and stomp our feet or something/Yeah something"--and a hook that hits like a JDAM. Maybe they should have released it later, because it should be, and still could be, the summer sing-along that Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle" was last year. And to every band that recognizes itself in the first paragraph, consider this twisting the knife: Ruess and Means are only 20 and 22.