Two years removed from their stint in revered indie group Luna, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips are happily married and – more importantly for eager Luna-deprived listeners – making great music.

Back Numbers, Dean & Britta’s major-label debut, emerges as if from a dreamy slumber in all its cinematic glory, throwing odes to ’60s orchestral pop, psychedelic guitar and dark, mysterious nights.

Yet with such a debt to the past, Dean & Britta’s latest never sounds dated. These are songs for midnight lovers and lunch-break daydreamers, a soundtrack to the ongoing film flickering inside your skull. Dean plays his Humphrey Bogart to Britta’s Lauren Bacall: it’s a vocal exchange between the rough and sultry. Wareham has never been the most talented vocalist, yet he finds a natural comfort singing duets with his lovely bride (’80s cultural side-note: Phillips was the voice of cartoon rocker Jem and currently lends her voice talents to Adult Swim’s Moral Orel).

The low hum of synthesizers and strings announce opener “Singer Sing” and sets the album’s tone. Producer Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T-Rex) creates a layer cake of pop melancholia, sweetened with Dean’s reverberating guitar licks as the sound of Luna’s three-chord velvety jams loom in the background.

To pull together the album’s 11 tracks, Dean & Britta delve into a music geek’s treasure trove of obscure covers to thread around their originals. On “You Turned My Head Around,” an Ann Margaret tune possibly alluding to ménage-a-trois, Britta belts the chorus to her husband’s blissful lead guitar. But for all Dean’s terrific guitar parts, it is subtlety that seals the deal for Back Numbers ; for example, the slight tickle of a xylophone goes a long way.

All great art entertains, and Dean & Britta give their fair share of head-bobbing, toe-tapping tracks. Sure, it makes for a rather esoteric choice of fun, but on songs such as “Say Goodnight,” the duo pulls you in with charm, a playful slide guitar refrain and the occasional “la-la-las.”

Part of the brilliance of the album involves the seamless weaving of the originals next to the cover songs. “The Sun Is Still Sunny,” culled from a theme the couple wrote for the film The Squid and the Whale, could have been a hit from any number of ’60s groups, just as two songs from The Troggs sound completely at home with the Dean & Britta originals.

The first and decidedly more bizarre Troggs cover “White Horses” comes from a popular 1968 U.K. children’s television show and was previously a top-10 hit for Jackie Lee. Similar to many tracks on the album, it is a song in which to get completely eyes-dilated, head-in-the-clouds lost, and in a great way.

And for a seemingly happy, newly wed couple, Dean & Britta surely have a lot of escape on the mind; however, it’s not the escape of the alienated, but the invitation of one lover to another. Britta sings on the jealous, sultry ditty “Wait For Me,” “Wait for me at the bottom of the sea/ Come along/ Run your hands through my hair.” Blame it on her voice, the shooting stars dropping through outer-space or maybe the “midnight on the moon” line, but it all sounds rather tempting.

The songs crash as a series of waves, one rush after another, washing over the listener only to return to the vast blue from which they came. The album’s closer and the second Troggs song, “Our Love Will Still Be There,” samples the thrust of the ocean under a military snare ride; very apropos. And Dean’s nearly whispered vocals get the haunting reinforcement of Britta’s synchronized echo of “I’ll even love you/ If the world stops spinning ’round.” If the unlikely event should occur, we can only hope Dean & Britta procreate, repopulating the planet with a hoard of handsome, gifted indie rockers.

Call it psychedelic-retro-baroque or New York-night-club-on-dope music, but pinning down Back Numbers isn’t really important. Dean & Britta spin one hell of an album. Find a loved one or the memories of the one who left you, and think of how you will one day score the movie of your love life with the songs from Dean & Britta’s Back Numbers.

Contact reporter Zachary Herrmann at zherrm@umd.edu.