Like so many creatives living in downtown San Jose, Ismael “Millhows” Villanueva had his epiphany at Cinebar. However, unlike like so many of his less-fortunate peers, the local musician was able to hold on to his inspiration—successfully preventing it from slipping away on a river of ice-cold Olympia and Jamo shots.

Millhows, as he prefers to be called, was DJ-ing at the Cine for a stretch—playing mostly soul, classic rock and garage records—when it hit him.

“I got inspired,” he recalls. As one-half of the garage-rock duo Dirty Pillows, who are currently on an indefinite hiatus, Millhows was no stranger to lo-fi licks. But in that moment, spinning records in the back of the bar, he began to make connections between the music of The Stooges and The Rolling Stones and those many soul, doo-wop and early rock & roll groups who had inspired the likes of Iggy and Jagger.

“It’s not a far walk to get from Otis Redding to Free or the MC5,” Millhows muses. “There’s a very thin line.”

Millhows is clearly having a blast dancing all over that line on his new project, The Jean Jackets, whose debut album, Money, The Hunt & Applause, is currently available for streaming on SoundCloud. His band plays Caravan Lounge on Saturday, along with Cola and Mother’s Worry.

“It’s basically a garage band album,” Millhows says of Money. Indeed, the record is no frills and lo-fi, and does sound as if it could have been recorded in a garage. However, upon repeated listens, it’s hard not to imagine the The Jean Jackets laying down the tracks to Money next to a baby blue ’56 Chevy Bel Air.

“Valentines Day” features wordless, crooning backup vocals, reminiscent of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison while “Morning Light” kicks off with a descending, chromatic surf guitar trill—sounding a bit like a sloppy cover of Dick Dale’s “Miserlou.” And plenty of tracks on the album feature the stutter-step pianos, deliberate arpeggios and snapping guitar punctuation immortalized by ’50s hits, such as “Stand By Me,” “Blue Moon” and “Earth Angel.”

Millhows says any similarity between The Jean Jackets’ music and these quintessential songs from early days of rock & roll are due to his admiration for classic pop tunes.

“I feel like my generation, and the generation under me is not embracing the ‘pop song’ as much,” he explains. “A lot of the music I love are great pop songs. More than anything, I wanted to exercise my pop songwriting chops.”

The Jean Jackets play The Caravan Lounge on Friday, Sept. 5, at 9pm.

The Dirty Pillows is a band that makes guys curl their lips and nod in approval while girls dance in semi-60s fashion (you know, all cute, yet provocative). The music is fun and energetic, yet has enough wit and charisma to satisfy listeners not inclined to light up the dance floor.

The band was created in San Jose by Alex “Millhows” Villanueva and Jeff Evans in 2008 after the two briefly played together in another project.

After countless local gigs and the release of their debut EP Just Plain Dirty in 2010, the duo is taking their music one step further with and “Extra-Large EP, seven to ten tracks,” due out Spring 2012.

Their recent song “Love Happening” sounds like something the Brian Jonestown Massacre might have released.

As Evans describes it, “That song is the one that everybody has their own interpretation for.” That is the greatest quality of The Dirty Pillows, their music seems to inspire something different in each listener.

“I took us a while to really find the sound that we wanted, but once we did it really seems to solidify,” Evans says. “And the great thing is, now that we feel comfortable with a certain sound, we can try different genres, but it’s still us.”

Other tunes sound a bit like Franz Ferdinand or something written in New York in the 70s. Jeff and Millhows manage to create those psychedelic, pop, garage tones with only two band members. Jeff is not afraid to hit his drum kit and somehow Millhows makes sense of the army of loop machines and effects in front of him.

“I sort of seem to channel this very post-punk, choppy, very angular guitar spirit,” Millhows says of his guitar playing.

“People have this sort of misconception that we’re like this incredibly loop-heavy band, and I use a loop on ‘Love Happening’ — that’s like the most loop heavy song—but largely, there isn’t a lot of looping going on,” he says. “I love that people think that because then I get all these extra brownie points.”

Millhows and Evans have chemistry on and off the stage and there is an obvious respect for each other’s musical talent.

“Millhows definitely has more of the pop sensibility, so we’re able to find that balance between something that’s kind of gritty, but then there’s that melody and it seems to work for us,” Evans says.

The Dirty Pillows’ next gig is January 11 at The Knockout in San Francisco.