Let’s Wrestle will play at the Black Cat on Saturday.

If there’s one thing the three gentlemen in indie-rock band Let’s Wrestle want you to know, it is that they are not goofy.

The London-based trio plays energetic and charming guitar-based pop songs, the kind of music that originally inspired the label “indie rock,” a categorization that is nowadays often misused and abused.

The lads are on their first cross-country tour of the United States and will hit the Black Cat in Washington on Saturday. The band is touring in support of its debut full-length album, In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s, which was released in the United Kingdom last June but only reached the States this past March.

Let’s Wrestle’s unhappiness with the “goofy” label stems from what the band thinks are misguided impressions.

“I think sometimes people can get the wrong idea about what we’re trying to do,” frontman Wesley Patrick Gonzalez said.

“For instance, people calling us ‘goofy’ and ‘crazy’ — that’s really annoying. People can f— off if they think we’re goofy. That kind of pisses me off when people completely don’t understand what we’re doing.”

Gonzalez says journalists and other observers “misconstrue a sense of humor for being a wacky dickhead.”

“I always thought we came off as an intelligent band, not a bunch of clumsy, goofy dipshits,” he said. “That has always confused me. … But people are gonna write what they’re gonna write and that’s fine. If that’s how they take it, that’s fine, but I’m just saying that they’re wrong.”

Aside from the descriptions Gonzalez and his bandmates find  insulting, things are looking up for the rising band.

“In general, everything that has happened to us since we started, I’ve been incredibly happy with and kind of overwhelmed,” Gonzalez said. “I think we’re winning. In terms of life, we’re winning.”

Even for all the frustration of unflattering simpleton labels, bassist Mike Lightning admits the band’s mission is relatively straightforward.

“We’re not trying to touch the public, or try to change the public opinion,” Lightning said.  “None of what we’re doing is like that.

“We just try and play the kind of music we like to play and have fun doing it.”

This tour is only the members’ third time in the United States as a band since their 2006 inception. But with each of them at age 19, that’s quite an accomplishment.

Being a young band hasn’t impeded Let’s Wrestle’s ascent — or its drinking.

“Drinking on tour hasn’t been a problem, really,” Lightning said referring to the United States’ legal drinking age of 21. “I think too much drinking’s been a problem. We’ve been quite drunk a lot of the time.

“Us being a young band hasn’t really affected us since we were much younger. We made a much conscious decision when we were younger to never say how old we were because we’d then just be lumped in as that kind of teen youth band.”

Though the group certainly does have talent, the charismatic members of the group don’t have a very exciting story to tell about the band’s formation.

“We started making music because we were very bored,” Gonzalez said. “Sitting on street corners drinking until late at night is not very satisfying if you don’t have any other thing to do.”

Gonzalez describes the band as “vague escapism.”

“We’ve all got our worlds that we sort of stay in,” he said. “It’s also bonding that you get out of playing with other people that you don’t get with anything else.”

The bandmates hope new friends will join them on their escapist journey as their musical careers continue to unfold. Just don’t call them goofy.

Let’s Wrestle will play at the Black Cat on Saturday. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets cost $13.

rhiggins@umdbk.com