Of sporks and spoons.

Over the last six months or so, Britt Daniel has put out a stellar record with his band Spoon, released an EP of collaborations with indie minstrel Conor Oberst and played bass, piano and guitar on the debut from a talented young Brit named Sally Crewe.

In other words, he spends a lot of hours in the recording studio. Which is why Daniel, who plays two shows with Spoon at Irving Plaza this week, loves being out on tour.

"It's pretty much all fun," Daniel said recently from his home in Texas. "To me, making records is the most important part, but touring is just kind of like going out and getting your dick hard every night."

Huh?

"I don't mean that literally," Daniel explained. "It's just kind of have-a-good-time mode."

Regardless of whether the erection Daniel speaks of is literal or figurative, Spoon is worth talking about if only because the Austin-based quartet is so woefully underrated.

Spoon, it seems to me, is among the best bands in America, and yet I don't hear too much about them. But here's the thing: It's not like you're going to hear them on the radio, of course, or see them in Times Square on TRL or some other vapid videofest. And it's not like they've really benefited from the whole Strokes/White Stripes/Hives/Vines "garage band" hype. This is a band that signed on with Elektra in the late 90s, only to flee the label after just one record. (Daniel, 31, says the only good memory he has of his major label days is having nice dinners paid for by Elektra.) It figures that Daniel, et al, plug away in semi-anonymity.

For the record, I didn't exactly get in on the ground floor with Spoon; I only discovered the band two years ago-and only then because a cute girl working in a Washington, DC, record store recommended the band's 2001 release, Girls Can Tell. Save for one wishy-washy ballad-a cruddy little track called "1020 AM"-the album is outstanding. The songs, all of which avoid sentimentality and self-indulgence, are built from the regular stuff: guitars and synth, drums and bass. And then there are Daniel's always-quirky lyrical turns; the songs on "Girls..." are about nighttime in Midwestern cities, faith, loneliness and fitted clothing.

The most recent record, Kill the Moonlight, is even better. The opener, "The Way We Get By," is unbelievably catchy pop, and "Jonathan Fisk" is a rocking three minutes about fist-fighting kids. "Someone Something" is a spartan track, and also a bit haunting, and "Stay, Don't Go" is just the opposite-jangly guitar parts melded with, of all things, a looped human beatbox. Daniel says he opted for the beatbox because "the drum machine was on the other side of the room."

As it happens, Kill... is a lot lighter on the guitar sound that was the band's backbone for so long. Daniel says it was not a conscious choice to back off on the guitars, just a byproduct of the circuitous route the band takes when making songs.

"We're the kind of band that doesn't automatically think that the first way we play a song is the right way," Daniel said. "'The Way We Get By' didn't change much, but 'Someone Something' started as a rockabilly song on guitar, and we completely took out the guitar. I think 'Jonathan Fisk' went through maybe three or four different versions before we got that. Originally, it was on acoustic guitar."

As you might guess, Daniel is pretty inventive, and it seems like he's earned whatever degree of success he's able to enjoy. I feel like I should thank that young woman from DC for introducing me to the band's music. She was right about Spoon, but I guess I'm not surprised. After all, as Daniel knows, girls can tell.

Spoon plays Wed. & Thurs., April 9 & 10, at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place (15th St.), 212-777-6800.