As local heroes the Hold Steady prepare to take the stage for their first show of the summer, things are looking dire. With lightning flashing and torrential rain pounding down, the crowd at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool begins to wonder if the band will even go on. Then, without warning, the clouds open, the sun comes out, and the five proudly schlubby members of the Hold Steady launch into "Constructive Summer," the first song on their excellent new album: "Me and my friends are like/The drums on 'Lust For Life'/We pound it out on floor toms/Our psalms are sing-along songs." From the first line the frenzied crowd is indeed singing along; there's clearly nowhere else they would rather be.

Every once in a while a rock band comes along that captures the spirit of their times, and in the hot summer of 2008 that band is the Hold Steady. Like a hard-rocking Frankenstein's monster mixing vivid, novelistic lyrics of teenage angst with teeth-rattling punk and classic-rock riffs, this gang of lumpen, oft-drunken thirtysomething music geeks have staked their claim to the title of best rock band in America. With a message that seems to say, "Listen to this. This is rock'n'roll. We, the people, invented this shit! Come on!" the band has more pure American spirit than Kid Rock, John Mellencamp, and Toby Keith combined.

"I didn't know this would be the band that would take me around the world," lead singer and lyricist Craig Finn, 36, says over black coffee in a café by the band Greenpoint, Brooklyn rehearsal space. "But as I travel, I definitely feel more and more American." This year will be remembered for many things: and economy on the rocks, an era-defining presidential election, a country in flux. And with their fourth album, Stay Positive - an 11-song collection that's guaranteed to top year-end best-of-lists - the Hold Steady have a genuine opportunity to become cultural ambassadors to the world.

It's heady stuff for the ultimate good-time bar band, whose sloppy, drunken shows have become legendary with a fiercely loyal fan base, and whose intensely literate albums - with an outlook that's both bleakly honest and full of hope and redemption - reward repeated listening. And though they are hardly household names, the band has gone further than anyone, including their own members ever expected "We weren't very ambitious," admits guitarist Tad Kubler. "When we started, we thought, Maybe we'll play some shows, and if we play some shows, maybe we should have something that people can take home. So we made a record." Then they made three more records, each one a gloriously debauched, achingly sad, and authentically rocking journey through the American suburban teenage experience. The next president should look the other way at lyrics like "Went down with some crust punk junk/And woke up with a straight edge band," and just give them a medal. Here are five reasons why we solute these guys as the Greatest American Rock Band circa 2008.