Like a lot of skinny white guys, Passion Pit's Ian Hultquist spent his teenage years obsessing over the guitar. So how did someone who grew up worshipping Wilco end up pushing buttons in a neo–New Romantic synth-pop quintet?

“I'm not sure how it happened, actually,” says Hultquist, reached on the road near St. Louis. “When I first approached [Passion Pit frontman] Mike [Angelakos] about putting together a band to play his songs, I never thought I'd end up playing keyboards for the next two years.”

Passion Pit began as Angelakos's solo project, principally an outlet for songs he'd recorded as a gift to his girlfriend. He met Hultquist, along with three other future bandmates, at Boston's Berklee College of Music. For five music majors with tastes ranging from Randy Newman (that's Angelakos) to thrash-metal (keyboardist Ayad Al Adhamy), being in a happy-making synth-pop group was, in some respects, a rebellious act.

“Personally, I was getting tired of playing and hearing guitars,” recalls Hultquist. “Especially in Boston, there's a lot of amazing bands out there, but there's also a ton of bands that are, like, semi-indie and semi–heavy rock and you just kind of drown in it. In the past two years, it seems like there's been hundreds of new bands showing up that are mainly keyboard-oriented. Now I'm just waiting for them all to switch back to guitars.”

While they await Passion Pit's inevitable back-to-roots phase, fans can make do with the fivesome's charged-up debut album, Manners, which marries fluorescent machine-made melodies to Angelakos's wildly expressive falsetto. “Sleepyhead” is the band's signature song, its corkscrewing synth blasts and grainy vocal samples establishing an atmosphere of competing emotions; on the dance floor, the track is an ecstasy bomb, but heard through headphones, it seems designed to push you to tears.

As songwriter and singer, the charismatic Angelakos is the quintet's focal point, but his mates have nurtured active creative lives outside his shadow. Drummer Nate Donmoyer deejays and produces techno under the Shuttle moniker, while Hultquist has begun a project called Aislyn, a meditative yin to Passion Pit's frenzied yang. Featuring Hultquist on beats and electronics, and his girlfriend Sofia Degli Alessandri on vocals, Aislyn is a subdued Twitter-generation update of '90s-era guy-girl electronic-pop—like a kinder, gentler version of Portishead.

The producer says he hopes to bring an Aislyn EP to market by early next year, but in the meantime, he's touring with Passion Pit, which is soon heading back to Europe for the fourth time this year. “You're out there with four of your good friends, who are like brothers to you, and you hate them and love them at the same time,” he says. “It's like having a constant headache that you still somehow enjoy. It's funny that way.”

Passion Pit plays Venue on Saturday (October 10).