Monterey natives Nick Pappageorgas and Easton Broome – the duo who founded The Dreamer and the Sleeper – have no shame in admitting their love for kitschy music. For their The Holiday EP, the band even included a cover of “Last Christmas” by Wham!

“We don’t hide our affinity for pop music,” Broome says. “We embrace it.”

That unapologetic adoration for bubblegum flavor eventually led to the formation of The Dreamer and the Sleeper about five years ago while Pappageorgas was at USC and Broome attended Berkeley. But the miles didn’t stop them from writing songs and posting them on the Internet.

After a few years of long distance songwriting, the pair moved back to Monterey and the duo expanded into a five-piece band.

“For the first three years we didn’t have a drummer or a bassist,” Pappageorgas says. “It was always just me and Easton writing everything. We weren’t really taking into account what a drummer, a bassist and an extra guitarist could do.”

Along with the personnel expansion, the band’s songwriting has become more versatile and flavorful.

On “Leaving the Hospital I’m Going Home,” a tune from the 2007 Oh, Is for Overture EP, a minimal collage of acoustic guitar and piano acts as the centerpiece. Fast-forward to July 2010, when the band’s current configuration played a new, untitled song at Jose’s, and an orchestra of guitars and humble percussion slides on a scale between Cold War Kids and Death Cab For Cutie.

“When we were recording on our own, we’d use electronic drums and play the bass ourselves,” Pappageorgas says. “Now we come up with stuff and take it to [bassist] Ray Padilla and [drummer] Anthony Cortez and they come up with stuff I never would have thought of.” Padilla previously joined Pappageorgas and Broome in the pop-punk outfit Bull Mountain; third guitarist Tim Neece is an alum of popular group Embers to a Flame.

While the new, more full-bodied tunes keep coming – Pappageorgas hopes to have a new album finished in nine months – the band continues dabbling in covers of pop music’s guiltiest pleasures, like Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True,” which they may grace audiences with in the near future.

THE DREAMER AND THE SLEEPER play at 8:30pm Friday, Oct. 1, at Black Box Cabaret, at the corner of 3rd and 4th Streets on CSUMB. Free students; $5 nonstudents. 582-3000.