It's 7:05 p.m. and it's dark inside the repurposed elementary school now called the Phinney Neighborhood Association. Perched on the ridge, its schoolhouse windows frame the under-lying valley—Green Lake and the trees and houses that surround it—like a giant university campus, with the Cascades for a backdrop.

The smell of tater tots is in the air, and there are faint voices at the far end of a long hall. Past the last room on the right and up a few more stairs sit Andrew Means and Michael Burton, chief songwriters for one of Seattle's best bands, Greenwood-based Velella Velella.

Means's office has blood-red walls, a desk, monitors, a swivel chair, a sofa, bookcases, a turntable, and hundreds of records. It's where he runs a web-design and print studio called Mountbracken and Campbell. In true Velella style, it's a clean and stylish haven, an annex in a castle. And it's not tater tots; Michael is eating French fries.

But the posters on these walls—along with the sofa and stacked, scattered records—recall another office in another city.

In 2004, Means was about to leave Spokane, Washington, the jewel of the inland Northwest, and quit his graphic-design job at the Local Planet, a now-defunct alternative weekly where current Velella Velella member Jeremy Hadley was music editor one year before. Downtown at Planet headquarters on the sixth floor of a big building, Means's office looked the same as it does now, down to the records, the sofa, and the posters (minus the red walls).

A few blocks away at the B-Side (the only cool venue in town, also now defunct), Means and Burton played music. In blue-collar, rock-out Spokane, Velella Velella was too abstract: The funk-snap bass, watery vibraphone, and shattered, lurching, programmed beats intrigued, then annoyed and lost people. Too broken to move bodies, it could only hope to move minds as dance floors emptied and people left the building.

"Going back and listening to what we made when we were first starting, I can see why a lot of people weren't into it," says Burton.

"When we started doing Velella, we were like, 'This is our project. This is for us,'" Means adds. He likens it to a restaurant that only served carrots and chocolate.

The band moved to Seattle, picked up Hadley and Sylvia Chen (of electro-pop group the Long Ranger), and diversified their sound, adding vocals, extra synths (the band perform with five keyboards), and recognizable song structures. "More avenues for people to get into the music," Means says. The band quickly became something to feel rather than just mentally appreciate, and their live draw is now significant and faithful.

Velella Velella's third release, the Flight Cub EP, is the band's best yet, a superconcise postcard from an undiscovered place, the work of a band creating and nailing their own sound. Flight Cub fans may not have heard the Spokane-era first album—the loose, experimental By the Wind Sailor—but many know 2005's Bay of Biscay, the band's breakthrough album. At once clear-eyed and drugged-out, Biscay's soul funk converted legions of local rock/dance/rap audiences into fist-pumping acolytes, launched two American tours, got picked up for distribution by Hush, and secured Velella as a KEXP mainstay.

But the five-song Flight Cub is simpler and tighter. Assured vocal hooks, especially from Means and Chen, push things into breezy pop territory. Bass lines still snap like bear traps, but also float Totoro-huge, lumbering like the Marshmallow Man. Cartoonish synth squeaks and circular, skittering high-hats are perfectly offbeat, recalling latter-day J. Dilla (RIP) without biting his style. There's distorted, driving jazz-rock fusion, the kind that pisses off purists.

It's also an emotionally rousing record about leaps of faith, with clear lyrical themes of personal empowerment. The title track goes, "You can rest your body/When you realize that/It's alright to be holding on." Preaching acceptance in the face of cosmic indifference, Velella will help you through hard times. The band's standard soul-saving shouted hook works best on "Brass Ass," a song that mandates proud responsibility be taken for life in general: "You've got to own it!"

Means says his aim for Velella is "to be really bold about the reality of joy." He hates that music is ever taken ironically, says that's like dating a stupid girl for the ego boost. Burton agrees: Velella is all about making people feel the music, all about ecstatic moments of community.

The hundreds of records around the office are also part of Means and Burton's evangelical thrust. The Velella house is built on soul music, and in Means's iTunes playlist, 23 of his 25 most recently played songs are by black artists. He's no race warrior, but, like New Yorker pop-music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, Means thinks most hip, independent music these days is whitewashed. He'd be thrilled to turn indie-rock kids on to the music he takes for source material.

Using strictly analog equipment (save some programmed drums), Velella's cultural learnings from 1970s funk/soul/jazz records get regurgitated in the basement studio of the home they share. In Means's office, as in the studio, there's an enthusiasm for weird, challenging sounds—we listen to records by Gary Wilson and heroin-period Miles Davis; they're incredible.

The guys suggest more: the Sylvers, Denny Zeitlin, the Intruders. They are spreading the word, teaching the fundamentals, showing and proving how and why Velella Velella does what they do.

The next day, Means sends me a new Velella track. Feel-good and spacey, it's a breakbeat-backed, roller-skating party jam. The refrain, true to Velella Velella's mission, just wants to get everybody on the same funky page: "We get you if you feel it too." recommended