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Opening for Ryan Cabrera isn’t all bad. Just ask We Landed On The Moon! (and yes, the exclamation point is official).

Ecstatic parents handed over their babies to be signed by the band, and the Ashlee Simpson ex/teen pop poster boy even sought their advice on where he should party after the show. “Just somewhere I won’t get my ass kicked,” Cabrera said.

“Try The Varsity,” replied John Lambremont, who plays keyboard and guitar for We Landed On The Moon!. He co-founded the band with singer Melissa Eccles, who does this amazing Ann Wilson deep-lunged thing with her vocals that makes you feel like you’ve been time-warped back to 1977 for some kind of intimate Heart concert for one.

Not that the music sounds like that. The band’s self-released eponymous debut is 11 tracks of not-quite-polished rock blending early ’80s and mid ’90s aesthetics to conjure mixed feelings, pushing and pulling the listener in different directions from track to track and occasionally within the same song, but nearly always to lasting effect.

“The last thing we wanted was an album where, by Track Two, people would have our sound pegged,” Lambremont says. “I think we have a couple different sounds on the record that work.”

Take “Everything Is Fine,” for example. Eccles’ voice is smooth, emotional, dominant and all-knowing, but electric guitars chug and squawk in competition with her. When an ’80s synth whitewashes across the entire rhythm section and reminds you of the scene at the end of The Breakfast Club when Judd Nelson plugs in Molly Ringwald’s diamond earring, all you can do is throw your hands up and surrender to the groove.

Then there is “Head Shot,” two minutes of post-punk rock that sees Eccles hot, bothered and loosing her head all together. She spouts off tarted-up lyrics over a machine gun riff like she’s running out of air. Noodling guitars bend and stab repeatedly, running out of time.

“I really enjoy performing live, because people get a better feel for who we are live, and that’s a huge release,” says Eccles, a longtime dance instructor. In fact when she first began fronting bands, she moved around on stage so much she ran out of breath. “A friend had to tell me ‘Remember, you’re up there to sing,’” she laughs. Though she may have toned down her body language, her impressive vocal range is a trademark for the band.

“When we first started we said, ‘We want to play a lot of shows and finish an album,’” Lambremont explains with nonchalance. “Now that the album is done, well, we want people to hear it and take notice, I guess.”

Lambremont sounds laidback about a music career, but make no mistake, We Landed On The Moon! is moving fast. Prepped for launch in 2005 when Dukes of Hazzard director Jay Chandrasekhar saw Eccles sing live and asked to hear some of her music, the band’s lineup grew from rock outfit The Ohms and was finalized less than a year ago with the addition of Jonathan Kolich on guitar. Up next is promotion of the full-length debut on college radio nationwide and an extended regional tour this fall.

Bassist Stephen Bowling and drummer Ryan Rushing round out the lineup. The CD is available through iTunes and cdbaby.com. If you find yourself really digging this band, log onto decentx.com where you can actually download We Landed On The Moon! ringtones. Welcome to 2006. welandedonthemoon.com.