New Jersey upstarts Well Wisher sure know how to make an entrance. Their debut album, This Is Fine, feels less like a rookie move and more like one by seasoned rock veterans. The band works through a compelling combination of punk sonics and pop melodies as though it’s been at it for years. The band’s message doesn’t materialize right away on the 10-song record. However, Well Wisher displays not only a mastery of its sound, but also its lyricism.

The opening notes of the guitar-dominant “Believe” shows Well Wisher has no fear of elaborating on the hard-hitting nature of punk with a personal touch. The song’s cacophony of distorted riffs, commanding beat and catchy melody likens the band to a second coming of an All We Know Is Falling-era Paramore. Other songs like the regretful note-to-self “I Know Better” also follow the familiar pop-punk hallmarks like youthful vocals and stomp-along beats.

A wealth of personal experience informs the lyrical flow of This Is Fine. Lead vocalist Natalie Newbold has said it was heavily inspired by a past long-term relationship. These vulnerable themes charge this record with an incredibly honest and uniquely raw delivery.

The melancholy but enduringly hopeful “Right as Rain” and the album’s brutally realistic retrospective love song “Waste My Time” displays the cathartic outlet Newbold finds in her words. She works through past heartbreak. These songs narrate the progression from the valleys to the peaks, exemplifying the beautiful foliage that grows following a disaster. In this way, This is Fine becomes a foil for the meme with which it inexplicably shares a name. Instead of pretending everything’s actually fine until life breaks her, Newbold acknowledges her broken situation and attempts to transcend it.

This is Fine strikes a balance between the dual tributaries of pop-punk in a way largely absent from similar acts coming up today. Cuts like the angsty “Half Bad” feel like those offered up by an early-2000s Letters to Cleo, or even a Bleed American-era Jimmy Eat World, through agile guitar lines and danceable drum bashing.

At other times, such as on the angry but heartfelt “Why Not You,” it feels like Infinity on High–era Fall Out Boy. While the band is still trying to solidify where on the spectrum of pop and punk it wants to exist, there’s time for experimentation and development. Well Wisher puts everything on the table and proves its not afraid to wear its heart and influence on its sleeve. The band comes out swinging with solid songwriting chops. Its understanding of how to impart believable emotion tops the work of bands several albums in.

Follow writer Piper Westrom at Twitter.com/plwestrom.