Electronic duo Phantogram comes to Knitting Factory

The cover of Phantogram’s sophomore album “Voices” features the band’s two members, Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, submerged in shadow, odd patterns of light crisscrossing on their faces. It’s a striking image, and one that cannily reflects the lush, evocative, sometimes expressionistic music contained therein.

The New York-based electronica group is on the road supporting British prog rockers Muse, but they’ve got several headlining dates coming up, including a show in Spokane on Wednesday.

“Muse is a really huge band, and this an all-arena tour,” Carter said from a tour stop in Houston. “We’ve played Madison Square Garden, maybe half a year ago with alt-J, and we’ve played to really large audiences at festivals. But we’ve never been on an arena tour. So it should be a lot of fun.”

Phantogram’s debut album “Eyelid Movies” caught the attention of critics when it was released in 2009; “Voices” was released early last year to similar acclaim. The band’s music combines propulsive electronic beats, twisty keyboard lines, swirling guitars and dreamy vocals. It’s part shoegaze, part trip-hop, part synth pop.

“We have a very similar vision in what we do and very similar tastes,” Carter said of his working relationship with Barthel. “But I think in our different approaches we balance each other out to make something unique.”

Carter said many of Phantogram’s songs start with an isolated electronic beat or an individual vocal melody, foundations that he and Barthel build upon. And though the band is a two-person operation, most of the time they write and work independently.

“A lot of the time when it’s just me and Sarah in the studio, we’ll work in separate rooms … then we kind of come together and work together from there,” Carter said. “I really like working alone a lot of the time. I’ve always written music by myself. I think Sarah likes working alone as well. … It’s easier for me to focus and get my ideas out on my own. If I get stuck or I have an idea for a vocal melody, I hand it off to Sarah and she’ll work on that. But sometimes we’ll get together and jam for hours.”

One of Phantogram’s recent collaborators is Big Boi, one half of the influential hip-hop twosome Outkast. Carter said the rapper, real name Antwan Patton, was drawn to Phantogram’s work after he heard the band’s 2009 single “Mouthful of Diamonds,” inviting the duo to appear on his 2012 solo album “Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors.”

“We hit it off in the studio doing that,” Carter said. “We had good chemistry, and we decided we wanted to make a record together if we had any time.”

The trio recently began a side project dubbed Big Grams, which Carter describes as “a labor of love,” and they released a self-titled EP earlier in the year.

“I grew up listening to Outkast, and they’ve been a huge influence on what I do as an artist,” Carter said. “Sarah and I call ourselves ‘Aquemini,’ after the Outkast record, because she’s Aquarius and I’m Gemini. I’ve always looked up to bands like that, even though they’re on the hip-hop end of things. … We’re just experimenting and having fun, doing things we might not necessarily do on a Phantogram record or on a Big Boi record.”

But Phantogram remains a separate entity from Big Grams – don’t expect to hear any Big Grams songs during the upcoming Knitting Factory show – and Carter said he and Barthel are currently working on a third LP that he expects to be released in the spring.

“It’s going really well. I’m really excited about the new material,” Carter said. “It’s in the same vein as everything else, but it’s a natural progression. But it’s definitely a Phantogram record.”