In a sign of his love of music and overarching lust for life, cool is a word that comes up repeatedly in conversation with Luis Dubuc. The man who performs under the name Mystery Skulls uses cool to describe his adopted town of Los Angeles, his childhood years in snowy Toronto, and family vacations in Vancouver, where his grandfather lived. It’s also his go-to word for capturing the rush of playing in noisecore bands inspired by legends like the Locust, embracing the power of heavy metal, and, these days, making impeccable synth-based retro-soul music.

For the latter accomplishment, check out Mystery Skulls’ captivating 2014 full-length Forever. The project was a fresh start for Dubuc, who had been playing both solo and in bands since his teen years. It’s only fitting he comes across as a man who took reinventing himself as a welcome challenge.

“I knew that I wanted to do music that had just a 4/4 beat,” says Dubuc, who—speaking long-distance from Los Angeles—is a forthcoming, engaging, and genuinely wonderful interviewee. “I wanted it to be electronic but not cheesy, to be cool, with the synths being really crunchy. I wanted people to ask themselves ‘What the fuck is this?’ ”

The answer to that question is one of the great under-the-radar records of the past couple of years, with Forever using phaser-stun synths, thumping club beats, and honey-dipped vocals to bridge shimmering early MTV synth pop and ’80s Motown.

Receiving universal praise, the record had Dubuc pulling an artistic U-turn. For most of last decade, he made a spikier version of synth pop with the punk-tinted Secret Handshake. He also formed the far-beyond-driven metalcore act Of Legends, rekindling a love of extreme music dating back to his formative years.

What’s remained constant through those projects and countless others is Dubuc’s never-ending passion for making music, no matter what the genre. That’s been with him ever since his family immigrated to Toronto (and later moved to Dallas) from a village in Venezuela.

“I was always into bands, playing in them, and going to shows,” he says. “I remember, as a teenager, my band getting to open for the Blood Brothers. I was 18 years old, and it was in this tiny little room that held 200 people in Denton, Texas. The way the people reacted to my band, and the way the show went, was just amazing. I remember going home to my parents and saying ‘I’m not going to college. Whatever I have to figure out to do this, I’m going to figure it out, because there’s clearly something here.’ ”

With Mystery Skulls, Dubuc is still figuring things out, noting that he wrote upwards of 50 songs before perfecting the sound he was after.

His obsession with the past doesn’t stop with the sonic side of things. Listen to Forever front to back, and it’s obvious that Dubuc is a fan of a long-gone era when records weren’t afraid to tell a story. The album starts out rushing the neon-lit dance floor, lets the Cali sun flood in with the buoyant bangers “When I’m With You” and “Body High”, and then recalibrates the synths to darkwave for the closer, “Every Note”.

Throughout, there are hints—consider the sudden “fuck it” at the end of the swooning “Paralyzed”—that life has thrown some relationship challenges at him.

“The whole record is very autobiographical, with a lot of songs about leaving Texas and bits of your old life behind to start over new,” Dubuc reveals. “It’s also about starting new and finding love, whatever that means, and then, with the last track, looking back and going ‘What the fuck was that?’ It wasn’t written chronologically, but the way that I sequenced it, it became chronological. I’m glad you noticed that. My favourite records are from the end of the ’60s and into the ’70s, where people were making full albums with huge themes.”

Cool.