There's a new sound in town, and it's being made by Viper Creek Club, a duo that recently released its first full-length album, Letters. The essence of the new band's new sound is bold synth-pop—sometimes ornate, sometimes dramatic, sometimes orchestral, sometimes energetic, sometimes super-sensitive. In their slick mixture, we hear a dash of Euro electro, a touch of indie rock, the occasional rush of electro funk, and softly sung tunes about the kind of emotional states that are found at the end of a brief relationship. You met last month at a party, it was a good two weeks of parks and breakfast in bed, then things started falling apart, and now you are alone again. That's the feeling.

Mat Wisner, 27, is Viper Creek Club's singer, beat programmer, and keyboardist; Brandon Jensen, 26, plays the guitar; they have been working together in a variety of modes and projects since 2006. Viper Creek Club, their most recent project, began in April/May of 2009, and their first show happened early this year.

"We're both Spokane, WA transplants," wrote Wisner in an e-mail. "I went to school there at Gonzaga and came to Seattle afterward. Brandon also went to school out there, and then migrated to Seattle to attend Art Institute of Seattle for audio production.

"I had a band in Spokane called Ambulance for Angeles which originally started as a duo with a good friend from a prior band. Tragically (it still hurts my heart), he overdosed on over-the-counter medicine after a bad couple months of life... Brandon and I met through a mutual friend who was the drummer for the reformed AFA at the time, '05-'06. AFA had a good run in Spokane, but we disbanded after the drummer got married and I graduated.

"When I moved to Seattle, I had no one to make music with, and was post-grad holed up in my parents' basement making sad bastard music. Brandon was the only person I knew in Seattle at the time who did music, so we linked up and we have been working together ever since." That is the story of Viper Creek Club.

This is the album, Letters, that was recorded by Frank Mazzeo in his Push/Pull Studio: It has 11 tracks, the shortest of which is the opening track, "Searching for Nineteen: An Introduction," a moody cinematic work that sets the listener off on a journey through an electric sea of sweet and sad pop tunes. "Soft Spots in the Dark," my favorite tune on the album, has a thumping, upbeat set against a quick, almost steplike clapping. A simple harmony of piano bass chords sets the background, while synth and guitar melodies slip in and out of the tune's cheery (almost beery) existence. "Crime Lights" is a harder, more electro-driven tune; it combines the raw energy of Justin Timberlake with a kind of Scandinavian pop softness. "The Engineer" is on the slow, reflective, deep end of things, suggesting in its pretty flickers and flashes and echoic chorus a warm phantom of Pinback.

Viper Creek Club are into not only electro pop but also local hiphop. In fact, Wisner recently informed the readers of URB magazine that Seattle's hiphop community is "absolutely boiling on a city level." He was not wrong about that. He was also right about this: "Some of these acts will be recognized on a national level." Viper Creek Club's response to this atmosphere of local excitement has been a series of high-powered remixes of tracks by the stars of the new school—Fresh Espresso, Mash Hall, Wizdom & Grynch, and Sol. These remixes are the night to their album's day. They are harder, heavier, more electrical. None of the original tunes on Letters has the power (or even desires the power) to dominate a dance floor like their remix of Fresh Espresso's "The Lazerbeams," a rump and thump of robot funk. Letters is one thing (cool, moody, thoughtful); these remixes are something else (raunchy, rambunctious, galactic).

What makes Viper Creek Club's hiphop project important (the remixes are going to be released as a mixtape later this year) is that it marks the first solid, artistic connection between local indie rock and indie hiphop. In the past, such connections were at best minor experiments that usually ended badly. In Viper Creek Club's remixes, we hear a connection that's convincing and alive with an energy that's genuinely new.