TO THE CORE: Vicini and his pals take a DIY approach, but they also want “to get rich or die trying.”

Beat Awfuls founder Dave Vicini, who also co-leads Viva Viva, has a penchant for contradiction. One of the best Beat Awfuls songs, “DIY Die,” is a hilarious sacred-cow slayfest that calls out indie-rock paragons like Drag City (“kind of shitty”), K Records (“a bunch of nerds”), Fugazi (“a bunch of Nazis”). Yet that’s how the Awfuls themselves operate: recording is done at home or on the cheap; album art and packaging are made by hand; CDs are distributed at shows or through the mail. It’s DIY to the core.

But for Vicini and his mates — bassist Dan Burke, drummer John Allen, guitarists Tommy Allen and Sarah Cronin in the Beat Awfuls; Burke, the Allen brothers, singer/guitarist Chris Warren, and keys dude Julian Cassanetti in Viva Viva — it’s an æsthetic preference, not a political decision. “We’re gonna try and get famous,” Warren says, sounding like the anti–Ian MacKaye, when I catch him at work at the Other Side Café. “That’s our plan.”

Vicini conveys similarly anti-indie ideas over beers at P.A.’s Lounge after one of the Awfuls’ recent residency shows at the Somerville club: “Get rich or die trying. Money is freedom to do shit.” And he’s not talking about the freedom to, say, buy a Bentley. “I would love to be like, ‘McDonald’s, you want to take a song and give me a million bucks? Cool, I’m gonna take this million bucks and put out my friend’s record or open up an art gallery.’ ”

McDonald’s hasn’t called, but Vicini and Warren have learned from previous experiences. Vicini sang in Boxer, the first band signed by Vagrant, and later the Lot Six; Warren fronted Officer May (who later became Dirty Holiday). They’re determined to approach their careers differently now. Warren: “Lot Six and Officer May went through the channels: the press and the shrinkwrap and all that. And you see this little wave of momentum, a blip. It’s like throwing a stone in the ocean, and you feel cool for a minute. Your ego is soothed. You can send your mom your clippings. But that’s really not what it’s about at all. . . . You don’t have to do anything a certain way. It’s way more exciting to hang out and write songs than it is to play in the middle of nowhere.”

The Lot Six’s biggest “break” was an invitation to tour with the Distillers. Vicini: “It made no difference. Those kids hated it. And we only got paid $100 a night.” With Viva Viva, Warren and Vicini have vowed to be selective about booking shows. Since their inception about a year ago, they’ve played just three, all of which sold out.

Both the Beat Awfuls and Viva Viva (the latter being the get-famous vehicle — Vicini often refers to the former as being a “fake real band”) came together around the same time, during the winter of ’05-’06 as the Lot Six and Dirty Holiday were petering out. After a few months of living in Brooklyn, Vicini moved in with Warren and his girlfriend in Jamaica Plain. Warren: “There was this extra room, the green room, where it was always like three o’clock in the morning. No daylight would get in. Dave would write his songs in his room and I would write my songs in my room, and then one day we just started playing in the same room. Practice spaces are really stale — it’s a sterile environment, whereas at your house you’ve got your books, you’ve got your records. It’s where you’re comfortable. We didn’t have to set up a band practice or anything. It’d be like, ‘Dave, I’ve got a song,’ down the hall. ‘Yo, check it out.’ And that’s practice.”

Over the next two months or so they wrote enough songs to fill upwards of 20 four-track cassettes. Then, along with Burke and Cassanetti (who had been in the Lot Six with Vicini) and the Allen brothers, they recorded eight songs in Tulsa frontman Carter Tanton’s Allston basement, using a gallimaufry of dusty old analog equipment. The Beat Awfuls had previously recorded three songs there; Vicini put them together with nine home recordings and three live tracks for a homemade release called Let’s Get Lost. He told Warren he never wanted to record with anyone else. Viva Viva are using seven of the eight songs they did with Tanton for an EP called Art Sex Death and Time. They’re in the process of putting together 100 one-of-a-kind packages, some of which they hope will be ready for their next show, February 24 at Great Scott.

The songs on ASDT sound as if they could’ve been recorded in the late ’60s or early ’70s, with their bluesy Stones riffs, fuzzed-out organ lines and guitar leads, echoey vocals, and generous auxiliary percussion. Vicini and Warren have a way with words, both trafficking in a sort of druggy poeticism. On “Heartache and the Blood,” the poppiest song on the EP, Warren makes deft — and poignant — use of his parents to address his own fears and anxieties: “Maybe they were drunk and insane when they were in their 20s/They were probably afraid because they didn’t have no money.”

Earlier on the album, Warren and Vicini sing in harmony, “We don’t need rock and roll/We don’t need anything.” But talking with Vicini, you get the impression music is as important to him as food and water. “I suck at everything else. I’ll probably die a poor-ass broke bum. But I don’t care. I’ll totally be happy. I made that decision and it’s awesome. It has freed me from so much shit. I’m doing this forever, and there’s no turning back. It’s a beautiful thing, I think.”

VIVA VIVA | Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Boston | February 24 | 617.734.4502