As musicians mature, their tastes and desires inevitably do the same. Maybe the emo band that played at People’s will become the heavy metal group you see at Hairy Mary’s.

But where does this progression take musicians who have devoted themselves to pop-rock, rap-core and metal for years? It’s possible the band might end up playing jazz like the Ames band Sahara Connection.

“Instead of listening to Megadeth all day, I’m listening to Miles Davis,” says Philip Lombardo, the 24-year-old guitarist for Sahara Connection.

He and bass player Imad Abbadi, graduate student in computer and electrical engineering, played in the now-defunct metal band Mechanistry before dabbling in jazz together. Lombardo also played with the nationally touring rap-rock group XL and DBD for a few years.

“Being a jazz band is on a completely other level,” Abbadi says. “Our experience has been overwhelming.”

After years of playing in smoky bars, Lombardo and Abbadi are thankful to be performing in the clean atmospheres of coffee shops.

“It’s not people going out to drink,” Lombardo says. “It’s people who actually want to go somewhere to hear music.”

Dave Restko, senior in industrial technology and drummer for both Sahara Connection and local pop-rock band Parallex, shares his friend’s resentment for the bar scene.

“Their applause is genuine,” he says. “In Parallex, I’ve actually heard a woman say, ‘I’d clap, but I don’t want to put my beer down.'”

Although the members of Sahara Connection are escaping from the skeletons in their musical closets, their personalities are marked not by bitterness but by unabashed charisma.

As the musicians sit around a table in Stomping Grounds, 303 Welch Ave., their boisterous outbursts of laughter fill the coffee shop every few seconds. Some patrons nearby even gather their things and move — but that could just be a coincidence.

Other than the fact that college-aged guys playing jazz is a rarity, Sahara Connection stands apart from most bands by its method.

Abbadi says Sahara Connection plays a fusion of bop, funk, rock, swing and ballads. From one song to the next, a myriad of jazzy styles will be heard during a set.

It’s not surprising the members of Sahara Connection don’t list their past musical affairs as influences for their current self-indulgence in jazz. As jazzy as the quartet’s personality is, it seems fitting that these musicians have purged the metal, rap and pop from their stomachs and are now playing a new tune.