Nickelodeon’s ‘Naked Brothers Band,’ about some young rockers, is maturing along with its fraternal principals.

TO fully appreciate “The Naked Brothers Band” (Nickelodeon, 8:30 p.m. Saturdays), it helps to approach it much as a child would -- the kids are the ones who make sense, the adults are background noise. Except for one thing: On this show, this is actually the case and requires no leap of the imagination.

Brothers Nat and Alex Wolff are the Naked Brothers, leaders of the titular, semi-fictional band that is forever followed by cameras, documentary style. They write songs and fight with each other and have fraught emotional interactions with women -- on paper, familiar turf for any rock group. The only giveaway that they’re mere children is that, unlike most adults, the Naked Brothers are actually growing up.

The second-season premiere of “Naked Brothers,” which aired last weekend, is a slightly slicker affair than the show’s early episodes. The writing and editing are cleaner, and Nat and Alex are more in touch with their status as leading men. (Surely, growing fame in the real world has helped the process along.) Nat’s voice is getting raspier, his stride more certain, his hair shaggier -- angst is creeping into his songwriting. (He writes the vast majority of the songs, younger brother Alex writes the rest.)

And Alex is emotionally precocious. Last season, a whole episode was devoted to his ability to cry on command as a tool of manipulation, and another -- the show’s best -- to his identity crisis after the sales and marketing of his signature look to the masses. In the season premiere, he lashes out against the baby-sitter who’s the love of his life by finding someone his own age: “Now let’s see whose heart dries up like a piece of beef jerky!” Even his childish petulance seems inspired.

Structure-wise, “The Naked Brothers Band” parallels the real Wolff family, except in one key respect. On the show, the boys’ mother is dead. In real life, she’s Polly Draper (late of “thirtysomething”), an executive producer and director for the show. Michael Wolff, the boys’ father, plays Dad on the show, though mostly as a humorous foil. Largely, the show prefers verisimilitude -- the band is rounded out by Thomas, David, Qaasim and Rosalina, and a manager, Cooper. All the show’s primary characters keep the actors’ names (except for Rosalina, who is played by Allie DiMeco). Also recurring are the Adorable Timmerman Brothers, a washed-up former boy band and cautionary tale.

There are also frequent cameos, to keep up the rock-star narrative -- this season, they’ll include Joel Madden of Good Charlotte and Nicole Richie fame and skateboarding icon Tony Hawk. And there are hooks for parents too -- Phil Collins will guest this season, and two weeks from now, Jules Feiffer appears as a cartoonist drawing backdrops for a Naked Brothers video. (Wait, maybe that’s for grandparents.)

Monkee business

ASCENDANT musical fame has been a recurring trope on Viacom networks in recent years -- MTV’s generally disappointing “Kaya” and the N’s sometimes too-mature “Instant Star.” But “Naked Brothers” owes its greatest debt to a far older project: the Monkees. Like the Naked Brothers Band, the Monkees were convened for a TV show and then became a true-life phenomenon. And also like the Monkees, the Naked Brothers Band has evolved from casual exercise into full-blown operation. There are DVDs, clothing, a branded digital music player and an album of the Naked Brothers’ songs, which was released last fall,

The music is serviceable enough, largely straight-ahead pop with echoes of the British Invasion. In last season’s battle-of-the-bands two-parter, the Naked Brothers’ competitors, snotty punks the L.A. Surfers, sounded huge by comparison. (And it seemed not to matter that the Surfers sounded better ripping off the Naked Brothers’ song than the Nakeds themselves.)

Compared to the music of “High School Musical” and “Hannah Montana,” the Naked Brothers are less streamlined but more thoughtful. It might explain why, even though “The Naked Brothers Band” has been extremely successful for Nickelodeon, it hasn’t tapped the zeitgeist in the same way as its Disney Channel peers. “High School Musical” and “Hannah Montana” are forever young, practically Botoxed in place. Nat and Alex, on the other hand, are grappling with grown folks’ problems, captured the zeitgeist on kids’ TV.