U. of I. at Urbana-Champaign. Sconza came from a rock-pop background. “I used to be in bands, like rock bands, from when I started playing guitar,” he says. “But I thought if I were to keep doing new things, the path would lead towards where we are—like electronic stuff.” Yarck, on the other hand, came to music as a fan. “I have no traditional musical background. Whatever I know, I taught myself,” he says. Regardless, when one of Sconza’s dance-punk bands petered out, they began collaborating. “I brought a piece of gear down to school one time and then we just started playing with it,” says Yarck, who had been producing his own electronic beats. The pair started calling itself Walter Meego in 2003.

The Chicago natives have since relocated to a house in Portage Park to live and record, and are taking a cautious singles approach: The band issued the self-titled EP featuring “Weekday” as well as the single “Usually” in 2005, with the “Hollywood” single landing earlier this year. Romantic also includes remixes by local, cuddly crunksters Flosstradamus; Swedish techno-pop producer Andreas Tilliander; and San Francisco beat maker Paul Salva.

“I would hope that our sound would indicate that we’re listening to a lot of different shit,” Yarck says. Indeed, it does, showing traces of Gallic house, electro-funk and new wave. They’re unabashed worshipers of Daft Punk (“We have one stereo just constantly playing it the whole time,” Yarck jokes) and Basement Jaxx, but also Nirvana. As Sconza says, “If it’s got a good chord progression and a good melody, I’m into it. It doesn’t matter if it uses a banjo or a Moog synth.” Some influences aren’t so obvious. “I love the fuckin’ Police, they’re awesome,” Yarck adds. But it’s Sconza’s neo–New Romantic vocal delivery that sets the group apart and makes it palatable for the mop-top Britpop set.

Officially, Meego is a duo, but it also exists as a live multipiece band featuring Andrew Bernhart on guitar and vocals, and Jarrett Speigel on turntables and keyboards. As Yarck explains, “There’s definitely some playback stuff happening, but the goal is live acoustic instruments coupled with live electronics: playing the synthesizers live, tweaking all the features. We’ve got vocal harmonies as well.”

But the group would like to give more attention to its dancey remixes of itself, “which are more overtly like, ‘you need to play this on the dance floor’ versions,” in Yarck’s opinion.

Remix-heavy Romantic will be released in the U.K. on the label Minds on Fire. Although the band’s dancey pop stands some chance of catching fire in the U.K., Meego has no plans to play England anytime soon. “We’re going to Iceland in like a month [to play the Iceland Airwaves festival]. It’s closer to England than Chicago, I guess.”

After that, we might not hear from Meego for a bit—the band is taking six months to make its first album. “We want to do it right,” Sconza says, “so we don’t want too much other stuff on our plate.” Except, perhaps, the occasional falafel.

Walter Meego plays Subterranean on Saturday 14.