The Asheville-based Steep Canyon Rangers’ lead song from their latest album One Dime at a Time topped the national bluegrass charts for the month of July.

“It’s like any other top 40 chart. It is based on DJ play time from all over the country,” said Woody Platt, lead singer and guitarist for the Steep Canyon Rangers.

Steep Canyon Rangers hit the billboard charts shortly after their appearance at Merle Fest for record sales for the album, heralded by Acoustic Guitar Magazine as “enormously satisfying ... pushing bluegrass into the new century.”

The band was nominated as Emerging Artist of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association, only the latest of a long list of accolades the band has been racking up as they began their climb to national prestige five years ago.

The band’s touring schedule is a witness to their popularity — Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and West Virginia in the two weeks leading up to the Mountain Song Festival in Brevard on Sept. 16. They’ve hit Minnesota and Wyoming in the past month, too.

“There’s not many young bluegrass bands touring the country and getting the shows we are,” Platt said.

The key to the Steep Canyon Rangers popularity is evident for anyone who’s heard the band’s unique style.

“We keep our bluegrass for the most part in the formula of the first generation bluegrass style,” Platt said. We tend to stay within the guidelines of what traditional bluegrass listeners would expect. But we write our own material. Very few of our songs are covers.”

A group of young bluegrass musicians writing their own songs in the traditional bluegrass vein doesn’t tell the whole story though.

The band’s Web site describes it best: “a style all its own, drawing on early bluegrass sounds and infusing their performances with a driving energy and a willingness to take chances.”

“A lot of that goes to our youth. That’s what separates us. It’s our own style and our own sound,” Platt said. “That comes across and has given us a lot of credibility in the industry.”