“Grad school is a very anxiety-ridden time,” says Wil Norton, 28, who moved to D.C. in pursuit of his Master’s degree in English. His bandmate Danny Davis, 25, lives in Oklahoma City, closer to where their project first started at Oklahoma Christian University.

“A lot of Saturdays we’d just sit around and record for 12 to 14 hours a day,” says Norton, recalling the duo’s fraternity days, when songwriting happened on the side. “We wanted to keep that up when I moved.”

They’ve kept it up via Dropbox. With the exception of two tracks, the surf-pop pair’s debut album — Golden Year, out July 2 — was written and produced via screens. Without a mutual location, Husbands had to focus on a mutual feeling, like the nostalgia of “Stay Gold.” (The title alludes to “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” a line from S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders.)

“This song is about trying to be sweet to my wife in the quietness of the house after our friends leave from a late night of hanging out playing Settlers of Catan,” says the song’s description on Bandcamp. The rest, Davis says, is riffing on that feeling.

That feeling sounds like a couple of Oklahomans dreaming of coastline, reminiscent of their influences Youth Lagoon and Beach Fossils.

“I feel like I write music that I can ideally drift to on an air mattress in a pool,” says Norton. Davis agrees. “I like to think of it as kind of sunburnt music.”

The book is “about a kid who keeps dreaming that he’s flying through a night kitchen with these chefs who try to bake him into a cake,” says vocalist and guitarist Jordan Levine. “I read it when I was a kid.”

Levine and Night Kitchen drummer Emmett Parks met in elementary school. Now 19 and 20, they have a bassist (Wyatt Rexach), a new EP and — as made clear in one of their new songs, “Vertical” (listen below) — an informed opinion on what “local” is starting to look like. (Let it rise. Bake. Share with coworkers.)

The final track on Hunger Games, released June 4, “Vertical” requires an attentive listen. “I’m talking about urban development changing the way things look, especially in areas outside of D.C,” Levine says. His lyrics speak to the theme: “They take what they want to, not what they need. All the same, they help themselves.”

The track sounds hungry for answers, and Night Kitchen isn’t the only one ordering them up. Other D.C. bands — including Chain & the Gang — have railed against gentrification in the Washington region.

But Levine hasn’t lost all hope.

“The DIY scene has really built up over the past five years,” the musician says. “There are people [from Maryland] who’ll travel to D.C. for a show… and vice versa, so it’s a lot of the same people. I think the growing DIY scene has made it cool and communal for people to support live music, which is good for music in general.”

It’s that optimism that prevents “Vertical” from succumbing to a bitter aftertaste.

Night Kitchen performs July 8 at VFW Post 350 in Takoma Park and July 15 at DC9.