When I first put She Like Electric, the debut album from the Seattle band Smoosh, on my stereo, I was pretty sure I’d entered a time warp. What I was listening to was actually the great, lost Kate Bush album of my youth, the first demo she ever made, before the suits got involved and her songs became ornate and kind of self-important.

A half hour later—the platter clocks in at a svelte thirty-two minutes—I’d dropped the Kate Bush theory. Electric is way too far-reaching. It careens joyously from introspective ballads (“Not Your Day to Shine”) to spiky indie rock (“Massive Cure”) to anarchic school bus chants (“The Quack”), without striking a single false note. If the band’s feel-good single “Rad” does not compel you to get up and dance, you are either dead or, perhaps more unpleasantly, a Republican.

The album’s range is all the more amazing because of one simple fact: Smoosh consists of only two members. Asya, thirteen, writes the songs, plays keyboards, and sings (in a mesmerizing alto). Her younger sister Chloe, eleven, drums. This last sentence somewhat understates the case. More precisely: Chloe drums like Topper Headen used to drum. She is an utterly fearless, spastic natural.

As happens when I encounter an LP of such unexpected beauty, I had a very hard time getting the thing off my stereo. I kept forcing all my friends to come over and listen to Smoosh and then spoiling the experience by babbling about how amazing they were, how the songs made me want to bang my head and hum along at the same time. My friends, somewhat accustomed to this pattern, nodded and listened patiently, then swiped my loaner copy. A week later they called me to report how now they couldn’t stop playing Smoosh.

It was clear I needed to schmooze with Smoosh. I contacted the folks at their label, Pattern 25, and a week later, we had a date. Because I live in Boston and the band lives in Seattle, the interview was conducted telephonically.

A possibly gratuitous author’s note: Because of the uncanny vocal similarity between Asya and Chloe, as well as the fact that they speak very quickly, I interviewed them one at a time. For the sake of continuity, I have occasionally interspersed their comments.

—Steve Almond

I. “WE WEREN’T TRYING TO TELL A STORY, WE WERE JUST TRYING TO CRACK EACH OTHER UP.”

THE BELIEVER: I love the name Smoosh. How did you guys come up with that?

ASYA: Um, let’s see. There’s this band Smashmouth, and we liked how that sounded, so we came up with Smoosh. We just liked the sound...