Ben Betts is a familiar name around Boothbay Harbor. Betts graduated in the top ten in his class from Boothbay Region High School in 2014.

He has played several instruments, including drums, guitar and ukulele, around town at different venues and was a big hit with his steel drums at Rocktide Inn and Restaurant during happy hour. He gave guitar lessons, after learning how to play and sing from his father, painter Brad Betts.

Having grown up in a musical family, Ben Betts said it was a given that he'd be a musician. “You start to recognize the whole music theory, and it becomes easy to learn one from another.”

After high school, he entered Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts to study music and psychology.

He said he decided on Hampshire for its innovative approach to education. The college encourages students to design their own program of study, rather than choose a major. “They take your interests and build a major from that,” he said.

Now in his second year, Betts has formed a band with three other sophomores, and they have just recorded their first EP (extended play), a musical recording that contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as an album or LP (long play).

The band, Hollis Woods, is comprised of Betts on lead guitar and vocals, Evan Welch on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Ben Lev on drums and Levon Ritter on bass guitar.

The four met during their freshman year at college, and formed their band in the Indie rock genre.

Welch and Lev both attended Beacon High School in New York City. “We were in different bands in school,” Lev said. “And outside of school we played at some of the same shows.”

Ritter, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said that during high school, he played in a couple very different venues. “I was in a metal band and I played gospel music at a church on weekends.”

The group was here recently, staying at the Betts' home in East Boothbay. They spent four days at a recording studio in Brunswick, Frog Hollow Studio. Owner and operator Jud Caswell said working with the band was fun. “It's been fantastic. They told me they'd never done anything like this so I talked to them about the procedure, and then they showed up and basically, they're one-take wonders.”

The band has been performing at their college and other places around Amherst, including one small local hangout in a nearby town. “We played at a dive bar one night,” Welch said. “I think we conveyed our music with the energy, but there were a lot of burly men and women there enjoying a beer, and not necessarily the music.”

All of the music on their new recording is original; most of the credit goes to Welch,band members said. “Evan writes the structure and the skeleton, and then we add our own parts and build it from there,” Lev said.

The EP should be ready in around a month. The music will be distributed online through musical forums like Van Camp, Spotify and eventually iTunes. It will be free unless people want to contribute. “This is really to build a fan base,” Welch said. “This recording was entirely funded by our fans. Our initial goal was $2,000, and we raised $500 more, so it was great.”

The band is looking forward to playing in Maine next summer, and they're hoping to line up some gigs in Boothbay Harbor. “We'll be playing at Windjammer Days,” Betts said.

Read more about Hollis Woods on their Facebook page and listen to some of their music on YouTube.