Slap ACROMA's Orbitals in your player. Set the volume to "stun." Push "play." Now close your eyes. The album's opening track, "Careless Ones," swirls into view like a sandstorm on an uncharted planet. The sound is vivid, technicolor, tangible. In fact, all of ACROMA's thirteen tracks--from the cloud-scraping "Sun Rises Down" to the regal "Some Desert Night" to the frenzied "Motive"--have cinematic quality.

To achieve that effect in their own music, the band--Stanley, bassist Tom Collins, guitarist Brian Christensen and drummer Joshua Zirbel--frequently called on senses other than hearing when they wrote and arranged their songs. They would close their eyes and visualize the sound before rendering it. "We were really into using colors to describe music when we were writing the album," recalls Jeremy. "With 'Some Desert Night,' Josh said that he got an open desert feel from the riff. I was getting the same thing from it. The chorus came to me immediately."

Ironically, one interpretation of the band's name connotes an absence of color. "We spell our name without an 'H,' but the medical term 'achroma' means 'lack of color,'" explains bassist Tom Collins. "It's also short for 'achromatic,' the opposite of 'chromatic,' or no musical notes whatsoever."

ACROMA (pronounced uh-CROW-muh) are familiar with blank slates--and adept at filling them. They're from Salt Lake, Utah, for starters, a highly religious, conservative city that doesn't encourage its small rock music scene.

"We approach the music from different perspectives," says Tom. "That's what makes our music unique. There's always a common place we meet, but we all have different influences." A thumbnail sketch of those influences looks something like this. Tom: industrial rock and electronica. Brian: the common and uncommon ground between the Smashing Pumpkins, Jane's Addiction, The Beatles and Live. Josh: Tom Waits, industrial rock and assorted "weird stuff," according to his band mates. And Jeremy: tuneful and timeless rock and pop.

The singer also takes lyrical inspiration from what he knows best: living life as an outsider, and questioning everything. Over the majestic cadence of "Sun Rises Down," he sings, "Hey, something went wrong. I feel great." The seemingly contradictory sentiment provides an evocative starting point for a truly individual album. "Everything came out of that lyric," he says. "The song is about not giving up and not letting people get to you---self-preservation. It's the feeling you get when you sink so low that you just don't care anymore. It's numbing, but it's also freeing in a way."