For five years, music adventures have counted on Paul Shugrue to serve up the best in what's new and most likely not coming to a commercial radio station near you.

He slips on his head set and hits a button.

“It’s 4:48 and you’re listening to 89.5 WHRV,” he intones in that easygoing everyman voice local listeners have come to know and love from his years as a DJ on The Fox and The Coast and, for the last 5 years, as host of the new music show “Out of the Box” on public radio. “We have 90 degrees across Hampton Roads and support for programming comes from Norfolk Southern—moving freight by rail, the smart alternative for our environment, Norfolk Southern, the future of transportation. Now here’s more traffic information.”

He takes off the headset. “Out of the Box” won’t go on the air for another couple of hours.

To his left is cart covered with more band stickers than a roadie’s suitcase. Its shelved are packed end to end with CDs in alphabetical order.

“These days I rip everything into the computer first, but I use the CDs as kind of like index cards. Like for example, here’s last night’s show.”

With his hands, he bookends a row of two dozen or so new releases in their jewel cases.

To his right is another stack he just received in the mail today. There’s stuff from Tom Chapin, Watermelon Slim and Boston-based folk artist Catie Curtis.

“I’ll probably play at least a couple of these tonight,” he says.

Sound engineer Al Sykes comes into the studio and hands Shugrue a computer disc. It’s a live recording they made earlier in the day of Sons of Bill, a new rock/Americana band out of Charlottesville. They’re in town for a gig at the Jewish Mother in Virginia Beach. Shugrue loads it up for a test run and a snippet of warm Wilco-esque harmonies emanates from the speakers. He’ll lead off the show with it tonight.

“There aren’t any other radio stations that would touch that,” he says, referring to Sons of Bill. “Maybe in Charlottesville, but not in Hampton Roads.”

But loyal listeners have come to crave the unexpected from Shugrue’s show, aptly titled “Out of the Box” for its unflinching focus on brand new music (and occasional re-releases), most of it by artists that aren’t getting much if any play on commercial radio.

“I think it’s gotten to a point now in commercial radio where there’s a kind of sameness,” Shugrue says. “So we try to take away that sameness with the show. And I’m always switching gears. I’ll put on a blues song. Then I’ll put on a country song and then a rock song. It gives people good variety, and it’s also stuff that they haven’t heard before. I think it’s a good kind of public service to do for people to bring this kind of music that isn’t available other places.”

Shugrue took over the slot from local radio legend Rollie Bristol when he left the station for health reasons in 2004. Bristol, who died late last year, was also known for introducing listeners to under-the-radar artists, but Shugrue added a twist by concentrating entirely on new music.

“I’m really happy that the listeners have gone along with it,” he says, “because it’s a challenging show, I think, because it’s all stuff that you’ve never heard before unless you listen to the show every day. It’s been a real vindication for me that people real want to listen to stuff they haven’t heard before. And I think that’s generally true with the public radio listening audience. They are looking for something different, something that challenges them.”

Along with new artists and local musicians, Shugrue plays a lot of new music from established artists, even icons.

“Strangely enough a lot of those big name artists don’t get played on other stations. Like Bruce Springsteen, he had a big album out at the beginning of the year and I played it a lot, but I don’t think there was any other station in town that played it.”

“Probably the biggest example last year was that song by Jason Mraz called ‘I’m Yours.’

I remember it came out, and I got it on Valentine’s Day. I thought it was like the perfect Valentine’s song, so I used it to start off my show. Then it was nine or 10 months before the song actually started to chart or anything, so I guess I can claim that I was there first.”

With 25 years of experience in radio, most of it as a music director, Shugrue has developed an ear for picking the good stuff among the mounds of new music constantly emerging from regional and national acts

“I know what to expect from certain artists. It’s a big help to be able to have that experience in picking songs. Although it’s not the kind of thing that people get to do much anymore--pick out songs.”

His on-air M.O. is casual and conversational.

“I’ve always been a fan of early ’70s progressive radio, when there were all of these kind of laid back DJs playing music and telling stories about the artists and the songs and stuff like that, so I sort of designed it in terms of that kind of style but with all brand new music.”