There are so many unlikely things about the rise of The Hold Steady, it's hard to know where to start.

Do you begin with the fact that the singer looks less like a rock star than a college English professor, complete with the glasses and frumpy blazer, that he talk-sings the songs or with the fact that the band has managed to marry the sound of the E Street Band, Thin Lizzy and Husker Du and sell it to a scene of elite indie snobs?

On the latter, frontman Craig Finn thinks there's a reason people are buying it.

"Sometimes I am surprised in that there's nothing really new to it," he says of The Hold Steady sound. "It's just basic. But at the same time, if I listen to the bands I loved, even as an indie rocker, things like the Replacements and the Drive-By Truckers, in every era of indie there's a band that holds the torch for straight rock. Rocket From the Crypt would be another one. There's nothing that can be taken away from you when you're doing a straight band. Things don't move on. When we started this band, the dance-punk thing was really big -- in New York anyway -- and it would be a real liability to be in one of those bands right now, 'cause it just kind of passed over."

The Hold Steady formed in Brooklyn, but the roots of the band are back in Minneapolis, where the 37-year-old Finn grew up with The Replacements and Husker Du as the rival hometown bands. He liked them both but says, "Really, I'm more of Replacements fan. I saw them more growing up and also they were a better live band. They were really hit and miss, but they were more special live, whereas Husker Du just kind of put their head down and played their songs."

Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler started back in 1994 in the Twin Cities band Lifter Puller, which made three records and some singles that blended heavy riffs with Finn's unique talk-sing style, reminiscent of poet-rocker Jim Carroll. At the turn of the century, Finn and his wife moved to Brooklyn, where he and Kubler hooked up again to form The Hold Steady in 2003 and debut a year later with "Almost Killed Me," an indie hit that put them on the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop Poll.

"The band was really born out of something pretty unambitious," he says. "Straight rock is the kind of thing you can get in there and play, you know, drink some beer and kind of pull it together."

No one, however, is calling Finn's lyrics unambitious. Combining the narrative style of a Springsteen song like "Incident on 57th Street" with a touch of William S. Burroughs, he paints a portrait of a festering street life rife with drugged-out party people that may only exist in his mind these days.

"I was interested in exploring the idea of telling stories and having narratives in rock songs," he says. "And I think the characters I'm drawn to are the ones most in need of redemption and forgiveness, and that might bring the seedy part you talk about. Desperate people, their lives move quicker than stable people, so to speak, so they're ripe to be used in the stories."

With his heavily Catholic imagery, Finn often presents them as a distant narrator, a bit too smart and self-aware to really be too immersed. Does he have to know Holly the hoodrat from the second album, "Separation Sunday," to write about her or can he create such a character?

"Yeah, I can make them up in my head. I mean, there's types of people like that in everyone's lives. You know, it's not completely out of my head. I knew a lot of these people, especially when I was younger."

Even though he was a little older, the characters and scene were still vivid on 2006's "Boys and Girls in America" -- from the young drug casualties who find romance in "Chillout Tent" to the girl in an abusive relationship in "You Can Make Him Like You." The record, another critical success and its first to chart (No. 124), also showed the band moving more toward an epic E Street Band sound, with an expanded role for keyboardist Franz Nicolay.

Anticipation was high enough for "Stay Positive" for the album to debut at No. 30 in July and also generate radio play for the single "Sequestered in Memphis." Some of the original scenesters who dug The Hold Steady may have moved on to other things, but Finn thinks "Stay Positive" is the band's best record.

"I always laugh at this because I think of Paul Stanley from Kiss. Every time they do a record he goes [in shrill Paul Stanley voice] 'This is the best record Kiss has ever done!' Um. But I think you always like your new one. I think 'Stay Positive' is the best record, it's the most musical, the most fully realized. I think it's in some ways the most subtle. It has the most to do with where I'm at now."

Finn's penchant for name-dropping other bands -- even the likes of Journey and Rush -- peaks on the explosive Mould-meets-Springsteen opening track, "Constructive Summer," which begins with him railing "Me and my friends are like/the drums on 'Lust for Life' " and ends with him exalting, "Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer/I think he might have been our only decent teacher."

The record moves on to more desperate characters, missing persons, murder and mayhem, like "One for the Cutters," about a turtlenecked college girl who gets caught up in dirty deeds with the "townies." Furthering the band's musical agenda, it's driven an elaborate production of harpsichord, elegant Roy Bittan-like piano and stabbing guitars.

"Being able to play music a couple hundred dates a year makes you a better player," he says, "and increases your confidence to try new things. I think it's overstated sometimes how much of a departure [the album] is. I think it's just about being more confident."

Confidence is obviously an important aspect to Finn's reign in The Hold Steady, as he can't fall back on the looks of a prototypical frontman.

"There's some sort of honesty and directness that I found can kind of accomplish anything," he says. "I think people want honesty and truth and are tired of manipulation, just in all aspects of their lives. So if you go up and just look someone in the eye and tell them the truth and actually act that way as well, people react really well to that, so almost nothing surprises me anymore if you keep using that as a guidepost. It's like, look, here's how I am. I'm not wearing clothes to make me look different. These are the clothes I was wearing today, and when I get on stage, I'm still wearing them. This is what I have to offer you. People are really open to that idea."

Finn says the band's rise from an obscure Brooklyn indie band to the radio play and piles of acclaim like Maxim's declaration of "Behold the best band in America" has been a nice steady climb.

"It's so slow that I'm not sure I would say I notice. The shows get a little bigger. But I hear people say, 'God, I heard you on the radio or on Conan O'Brien.' But it all seems sort of surreal, I think, because we're a little older. I mean, I'm 37 years old, so it isn't such a whirlwind. At the end of the night, even if we're invited to an 'after party' or something like that, I'm probably most likely to be going home. That's not everyone, I'm just saying for me."

And when he looks out at those people in the crowd who want to party with him after the show, he's not seeing types like Holly the hoodrat.

"I think quite the opposite," he says. "I think there's a lot of people living pretty normal lives that are drawn to the band to kind of go somewhere else in their minds for a couple hours at our shows."