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Houma-based punk-blues-soul duo Deadboy and the Elephantmen has gained slots at Bonaroo, Coachella and the Austin City Limits Festival. Their second album We Are Night Sky received four stars from Rolling Stone, and Henry Rollins booked them on his IFC show alongside heavyweights such as Sleater-Kinney and The Pixies.

Still, singer songwriter Dax Riggs is rather down-to-earth about his band. “It’s a mix between soulful trash rock and apocalyptic folk. You know, the classics,” he laughed as he prepared his makeup before their latest show at SoGo Live.

Tessie Brunet (left) and Dax Riggs of Deadboy and the Elephantmen.

His backstory has garnered a lot of press: A high school drop-out from Houma forms underground death metal band Acid Bath, which goes on to sell 100,000 copies of its two albums worldwide. The album covers boast art by such notorious figures as serial killer John Wayne Gacy and suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian; but the death of bassist Audie Pitre led to the band’s dissolution.

“I had an image in my mind to cover the songs I write, I wanted to give it a body,” he says of the Deadboy project, which takes the catharsis and depth of the Acid Bath recordings and recasts it in a singer songwriter context.

Also it frees up Riggs to really sing, no longer shackled by the metal growl. Live, he exhibits a range and timbre not unlike Neil Diamond, a mix of silky arpeggios, dead on melodies and roughhewn vocal power. When asked if that comparison bothered him, he exclaimed, “Hell no, I love Neil Diamond. He’s one of my favorite vocalists ever.”

Overall, Riggs seems delighted with how the band is evolving. “It’s just a good feeling when you work with people you like, and those people love your music.”

Deadboy and the Elephantmen’s We Are Night Sky is available on Fat Possum Records.