Many 19-year-olds fantasize about Britney Spears, but for pop-punker Tony Lovato, fantasy borders on obsession. Unlike the majority of his peers, Lovato has acted on his fascination with the sexual icon, casually offering to take the former Mickey Mouse Club member on a date. “Oh ya, and Britney Spears – give me a call we should go out sometime,” Lovato, vocalist/guitarist for pop punk band Mest, writes in the liner notes for the band’s latest album, “Wasting Time.” This could be taken as punk rock humor. For Lovato, it is no joke. Bright gold letters spelling “I love Britney,” adorn the baseball-style T-shirt he wears in the photograph on the cover of “Wasting Time.” He owns a guitar smothered in pictures of Spears, an amp covered with a cut-out poster of the singer and $40 worth of Britney Spears Barbie dolls that are now attached to the top of his guitar amp. But is she really his dream girl? “She’s one of my fake ones,” Lovato says. Even if Spears isn’t quite his ideal woman, Lovato is more than willing to write and perform a duet with her. “It would definitely still be a punk song,” Lovato says of the potential Mest/Spears collaboration. “She’d just have to sing with a little more aggression.” This may sound a bit strange coming from a punk rocker, but the genre has evolved since the days of the Sex Pistols. Rather than employing an all-out sonic onslaught, Mest blends Buddy Holly-era rock `n’ roll, mellow ska and late-’90s pop with their Green Day and Goldfinger-influenced punk. And though he is somewhat hesitant to say it, Lovato sees similarities between Mest and “Total Request Live” favorites like `N Sync. “I guess we’re kind of like a punk rock boy band,” Lovato says. Mest is not alone, however. Blink-182 is leading the recent surge of punk bands that have developed Backstreet Boys-like appeal through MTV. “When you’re good-looking and you play melodic music, you’re going to have 14-year-old fans,” Lovato says. “Every band that makes it huge has to have 14-year-old fans.” Even though he loved the New Kids on the Block as a kid, the Mest vocalist doesn’t want to be too closely associated with boy bands. “I have absolutely no respect for them because they don’t write their own songs,” Lovato explains. The music is what is most important to the band, rather than “TRL” appeal. During the writing process, Lovato focuses on the melody, discarding any song he cannot hum in his head. Strong songwriting helped get the band where they are today – in addition to the guardian angel-like influence of John Feldmann, frontman for pop punk veterans Goldfinger. After seeing Goldfinger in Chicago, Lovato managed to give a demo to Feldmann. Lovato, a huge fan of the band, had been attempting to contact them for a long time. Then, one day, his phone rang. “He actually called me,” Lovato says. “It was pretty weird to have him call out of nowhere.” Feldmann called to say he liked the demo and he wanted to give Mest what they had been coveting for so long – an opening slot for a Goldfinger show at Chicago’s House of Blues. “That was our first real big show,” Lovato says. “The crowd went off – it was insane.” Goldfinger’s fans were not the only people impressed with the band’s performance. Goldfinger themselves were blown away. “John said that was the best response he’d seen for an opening band,” Lovato explains. Feldmann worked with the band, found them a record label, and served as producer, mixer and engineer on their debut album. “I didn’t even know he produced bands,” Lovato recalls. “It was like a dream come true.” And now, Mest is touring with Goldfinger, continuing what had once been a dream. Audiences have responded wildly to the band’s music, and at times, especially in Chicago, the shows get rougher than a Limp Bizkit concert, Lovato estimates. Mest does give the crowds a break, however. “What’s the Dillio?,” a fan favorite and the first single off “Wasting Time,” allows the band to talk with the audience and slow things down. “It gives the kids in the crowd a chance to dance instead of fucking beating the shit out of each other the whole time in the pit,” Lovato explains. The reprieve is short-lived, however. “The crowd goes off, and we go off on stage – we’re in the crowd with our guitars,” Lovato says. That level of fan interaction is a far cry from singing (or perhaps lip-syncing) a duet with Britney Spears. However, Lovato is quite happy with the fantasy that has become his reality. “I know I want to make music for the rest of my life,” he said. “I can’t see myself doing anything else.”