Have you seen that video going around the website formerly known as Twitter, where a young MGMT ecstatically perform their yet-to-be hit “Kids” on Wesleyan’s Westco courtyard? The two musicians fidget with their synths and read nervously from a lyric sheet, oblivious to the crowd of barefoot college kids captivated in front of them on the lawn. That clip spread widely in part because it evoked a supposedly halcyon period of collegiate sincerity, when making your friends dance felt like the only thing that mattered, “mp3 blogs” produced a seemingly limitless rotation of buzzy new bands, and the border between making art and throwing a party was porous at best.

A few years later and one state over, Fang Island was born into that same halogenic atmosphere. The band formed in 2005 as a class credit at the Rhode Island School of Design—“We got a ‘B+’ on the project and thought that was worthy of pursuing,” guitarist and keyboardist Chris Georges later recalled. In the group’s relatively brief existence, Georges, vocalist and guitarist Jason Bartell, and drummer Marc St. Sauveur bottled up their disinhibition with a rotating cast of bandmates and brought it to sweaty Manhattan rock clubs like Santos Party House and Cake Shop. Their boundless energy fit a scene built on intimate venues and blogs with loyal followings, where a few passionate voices or a great show at SXSW could change the trajectory of a band’s career. But only a few years after Fang Island’s debut, the band quietly faded out, its members growing out of touring and into jobs and families. A decade after the band’s dissolution, enter Doesn’t Exist II: The Complete Recordings: a reissued and remastered box set of Fang Island’s entire catalog. It’s a three-guitar salute for America’s most relentlessly joyful blog-rock band.

With more guttural cheers than words, Fang Island sounded like a Cheap Trick record left out to melt on a hot summer’s day, or a confetti cannon going off at a Thin Lizzy concert, or the day they bring the big parachute into gym class. Their 2006 EP Day of the Great Leap, released here for the first time on vinyl alongside the 2008 EP Sky Gardens, reverberates with echoes of Providence noise rock: “We Were Lions” vibrates with the kinetic energy of local heroes Lightning Bolt, riffs darting up the fretboard like the band is planning a heist; the fevered paranoia of Les Savy Fav creeps in on “Meateater.” There are no vocals on Day of the Great Leap, and navigating its hooks feels a bit like walking a familiar path at dusk: Even without the usual markings of rock catharsis—a screamed lyric, an impassioned bridge—you can anticipate and relish the intensity of the breakdown on “Vlad” all the same. Their guitars alone offered a stream of exclamations, a “Hell yeah!” amplified by three pedal boards.

Fang Island’s perspective was unabashedly positive—their 2010 debut full-length opened and closed with crackling fireworks, two years before fellow “hell yeah” rockers Japandroids did the same on Celebration Rock. But these songs are less interested in recounting a play-by-play of a great night out than capturing the sound of that warm and infinite feeling. When these songs do include lyrics, the verses ring out like long-lost folk standards: “They are all within my reach/They are free,” they sing, plainly but with conviction, on “Dreams of Dreams.” “Daisy” conjures Tommy via very few actual words, every verse dissolving into a group chant of vowel sounds.

The magic of Fang Island was this ability to evoke joy in the form of guitar solos and drum fills, their wordlessness leaving room for individual exuberance. Perhaps that’s why their second and final album, 2012’s Major, feels like a retreat from the band’s mission. Combining lopsided rhythms and spring-loaded melodies with piano and more narrative lyricism, Major puts words to the emotions Fang Island’s songs had previously only suggested. There’s a completeness to these songs, but also a natural limitation: It’s harder to share in a collective release when faced with more concrete images, like “Your legs lie so full of grace they’re frightening.” Still, of these three reissues, Major sounds the sharpest, the remaster wringing even more out of the guitars on “Chompers” and the synths on “Asunder.”

Bolstered by an indie rock boosterism that feels deliriously far from the music industry today (I originally found them when the deep-fried synth freakout “Life Coach” landed on a playlist created for Urban Outfitters), Fang Island reflected the enthusiasm of their surroundings. It’s fitting then, that this reissue includes the final song the band recorded, “Starquake,” performed live countless times but previously only released via a limited-edition flexi disc. Written in 2006 but tracked in 2014, the song is an eerily contained summary of the band’s history: A piano gives way to competing guitars that spiral upwards like a Guns N’ Roses cover band playing in heaven. The band cycles through rhythms like they’re playing the overture to a musical about Fang Island, a dizzying onslaught that compresses a decade-long career into five giddy minutes.

The version of “Starquake” featured on this reissue was recorded at Silent Barn, one of the many now-defunct venues in New York that elevated groups of college friends to national status. As internet archives fade and digital files degrade, it’s easier than ever to lose sight of a moment in the recent past when bands could be propelled from living room shows to opening for the Flaming Lips by a few positive reviews online. Santos Party House is now an axe-throwing bar, and Urban Outfitters is currently running a sale on vinyl copies of 1989. But on these reissues, Fang Island still sound like an endless party, a final round of high-fives for everyone before the lights come on.