Jon Fitzgerald and Lawrence indie-rock band Paper Buffalo will be performing tonight at the Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts St., as part of Lawrence Field Day Festival.

You wouldn’t guess this by looking at them, but Paper Buffalo sounds wise beyond their years.

To peg them as just an indie-rock band wouldn’t do them justice. Their guitar riffs are a labyrinth of complicated puzzles, aided by awe-inspiring vocals not commonly found in these parts. Throw in their unconventional approach to percussion (one of their drummers sometimes whips out a conch in the middle of a song), and Paper Buffalo has turned into one of the more exceptional acts currently active in the Lawrence music scene.

Lawrence Field Day Fest

Breaking in

Somehow, at the ripe old age of 21, the band’s frontman has already been around the block in this music scene. Jon Fitzgerald picked up guitar the moment he got out of elementary school, and has relentlessly worked on one musical project after another.

Now, his current band is featured as one of the main attractions at Lawrence Field Day Fest. Over the course of three days, the massive music festival will take over venues from one end of downtown to the other. Paper Buffalo, one of more than 50 bands rocking the Lawrence stages, headlines the opening night Thursday on the Replay stage with a performance scheduled for 1 a.m.

But Fitzgerald only recently became old enough to play the Replay stage. The expert guitarist with a monumental voice spent much of his youth performing in the area. While many musicians work tirelessly to break into the scene, Fitzgerald says it was pretty easy.

“It’s not as hard as most places,” he says. “If you can get on a bill and open, that’s really how you prove yourself. We played tons of empty shows for a long time.”

Performing in bands with musicians roughly the same age as him, Fitzgerald depended on being “the opener” at countless shows. But it wasn’t until a lineup change and a well-received EP release “White on White” that Paper Buffalo started taking the lead at shows.

Digging deeper

Because every member of Paper Buffalo is a Lawrence native, their audience ends up being pretty diverse. The familiar faces of a community that watched Fitzgerald (and his bandmates) grow up will turn up for his shows alongside members of the music scene.

Fitzgerald says he wouldn’t be able to pull off crowds like those anywhere but Lawrence.

“We’re the band that other bands go see,” he says, only half-jokingly. “I feel like Lawrence is actually filled with people who play music and can articulate what they want even more. I feel there’s a lot more players than most scenes. Most city scenes are mostly listeners.”

You can count Fitzgerald as one of those players and listeners. At some point in his musical career, there was a type of sound that he craved but couldn’t find in any of the local bands. So he started creating it himself.

“When you’re an avid music listener, you find out what you like and get invested into certain things, you dig deeper. I’m always getting closer to that perfect sound I want to hear, but there’s always something missing,” he says. In a buildup to the release of “White on White” in March, Fitzgerald worked obsessively on making alternative rock sounds filled with tension and epic buildups.

“There’s a lot of math values in it. I like to use time signatures that you wouldn’t expect that would push the listener around and have them follow what we’re doing,” he says. “There’s a whole bunch of things going on, and every time you listen you can hear another thing that you didn’t notice before.”

Fitzgerald says Paper Buffalo doesn’t have the usual band goals. Rather than working toward an album and only glancing at the idea of touring, the young band is married to the songwriting process in an effort to perfect the mood Fitzgerald seeks so passionately.

“At first, you’re just a band because you’re trying to be a band and make shows, be present in the community. But at some point there was a sound I realized going on that only we were making,” he says. “So at this point, it really is about the sound and keeping it going. I’m making music that I like.”

See how far Paper Buffalo has come in their quest for that perfect sound when they play the Replay on Thursday night of Lawrence Field Day Fest.