They didn’t plan it this way. Durham is the singer/songwriter/producer for the band Black Lab. Deej is a producer/guitarist/frontman. Bohak is a drummer and a bad ass housepainter. Somehow, between San Francisco, L.A. and Atlanta, they found themselves in Montana.

This turns out to have been a good thing. It seems that if you’re not into skiing, climbing, riding, hunting or fishing, there’s isn’t much to do in Bozeman. So the boys have been spent a great deal of time in their studio, sweating blood, making music.

In this particular case, this music represents an attempt to weld together the funk of American indie dance-rock and the epic vistas of British new wave. The result is Stray Palace. The band tries to build something huge and tear it all down at the same time. It’s a grand dream, full of emotional clarity, muddy streets and too much hair gel. It’s three guys trying to make something new, trying to say something old in a way that’s never been heard before.

Stray Palace has a huge sound, born of Durham’s love of Echo and the Bunnymen and the Chameleons UK. After life on two major labels and dozens of film/TV soundtracks (Spider Man, Blade, Buffy, The Shield, etc.), Durham had escaped the madness of L.A. and built a beautiful studio in the wilds of Montana, hoping for some peace. Alas, it was not to be.

An old friend of his named Deej sent him some sketches for tracks, all the way from Atlanta. The tracks and the melodies he heard in his head kept him up at night, and soon the two were hard at work long distance, muscling the sound back and forth. It dawned on them that it might help to be in the same room together — and also, that they needed a drummer. Bohak had played drums in Deej’s band and seemed to fit the bill, but was living in L.A.

Bozeman was the cheapest place to live, and also had the cleanest air and the best beef, so Bozeman it was. Deej and Bohak made a huge leap of faith, humping it all the way out to Montana. Holed up for months, the band carved out their territory. Deej wanted the funk, bringing his bad-boy falsetto to “Hungry” and making sure that whatever else was going on, asses would shake. Bohak made sure the blips and bleeps were balanced out by real instruments made out of wood. They fattened up the tracks, then stripped them back down to the skinny.

The resulting EP is a combination of party and passion, ache and attitude. It’s the cool kid at the party who turns into a goofy, open-armed romantic, begging for it in the rain. It’s freedom, change, hunger, escape and desire, distilled into something you want to hear over and over and over. It’s sweet, it’s shadow and, hopefully, it will haunt you.