By Kimberly Chun

KEEP YOUR RETRO , cute, and sweet descriptors to yourself when Nedelle Torrisi and Thom Moore are in the house.

That house – or rather a flat on a sunny flank of the Castro – is relatively new for Torrisi. Sun floods in through the long, tall Victorian-ish windows in her white-walled room, as Moore lounges on her red comforter-ed futon. Books, CDs, and vinyl outnumber the Yoda figurines, though she shows off her still-packaged, grunting Master P doll, and we gather round to study a videotape of the duo's musical rediscovery, Biff Rose, a New Orleans songwriter probably best known for contributing a song, "Fill Your Heart," to David Bowie's Hunky Dory. There's even talk of Torrisi and Moore's new CD, Summerland (Kill Rock Stars) – file under the name Nedelle and Thom, who are masked by Photoshopped toy cat heads on the cover.

There's no call to be coy. The album is a lovable, buoyant slice of indie soul-pop that the duo unabashedly positions among their favorite girl-group numbers and Burt Bacharach tracks. Backed by a rhythm section composed of Karate's Gavin McCarthy and Jeff Goddard, they've crafted songs that slide quietly into your consciousness and charm with their unexpected chord progressions, jazzy color, and Torrisi's pure, easy vocals. It's a refreshing throwback to an era when clarity and enunciation were all the rage.

Friends and admirers such as singer-songwriter Bart Davenport can't rave enough. "Thom is quite literally the best songwriter I have ever personally known," he writes in an e-mail. "Nedelle's vocal style is disarming and cute and yet her voice is so totally on that I can't help but envy her every note. I can't believe I actually know these people. Both have been an influence on my stuff and will continue to be. Their songs make me all glassy-eyed and happy."

Feeling for the edge

But all isn't quite well in Summerland – starting with that need to bring up other eras. "People like the album, but they always call it retro," Torrisi complains mildly, "and I think, is all traditional songwriting retro now? Is that style dead? I don't think it's retro just because we write traditional songs."

"I expected that there would be more disapproval from the Kill Rock Stars fans," Moore adds. "Just because it's so naive. It's innocent, and it's not very jagged. When I think Kill Rock Stars, I think edge, angular, Sleater-Kinney stuff, and this album is sooo slick. I thought people would think, 'It's not very good. It's not satisfying my need for edge.' Though maybe it does have an edge. But it has edge maybe in the same way that the Carpenters have edge."

"Disturbed, maybe," Torrisi agrees in her soft, purry mumble. "Karen was disturbed, that's for sure, and even if she didn't write all the lyrics, she sang them as though she did, and she was a really sad person. And that's interesting."

All this talk about the Carpenters makes you hungry – anorexia can do that – and you wonder if Torrisi and Moore will ever live down those still somewhat nerdy associations with their beloved Bacharach. The pair continue to make beautiful music together – though they recently split as a couple – so perhaps they'll find an audience beyond the AARP-discount crowd, which, they say, dogged their recent U.S. tour once press latched onto the B word.

"It kind of works well if you listen to Burt Bacharach and then Captain Beefheart," offers the laid-back Moore, who put in time working at Amoeba Music in Berkeley. "But it's a mixed blessing because a lot of times we'd get people straggling in to our show, and they'd be in their 60s, straight-looking people. In Fargo, North Dakota, there was a whole group of, like, 20 people who looked like they came from the church dating group because there was a little article that mentioned Burt Bacharach.

"I think it turns off the kids, probably. But we just take what we can get!"

Keep walking

Though maybe the kids don't know what they're missing – like Dionne Warwick's rendition of Bacharach's "Walk on By" or his work with Dusty Springfield, or Torrisi's preferred girl groups, the Exciters, the Shirelles, and the Ronettes. Or the Moore Brothers project with Thom and his bro Greg. The unintentional counterpart to the music of the Owl and the Pussycat, Greg Moore and Lois Maffeo's Kill Rock Stars twosome, Nedelle and Thom's Summerland came about after label boss Slim Moon agreed to put out Torrisi's second solo album and follow-up to last year's Republic of Two (Kimchee). Then those unexpected edges emerged, in the form of, for instance, mushroom clouds, acid rain, and melted skin on Sumerland's bouncy "Cute Things," which Moore wrote on Sept. 12, 2001. "I believe there's more to life than what you see / Take my hand and you can come along with me / Because I've been to the future, baby, / And I'll tell you what's in store / There ain't going to be any cute things anymore," Torrisi sings meltingly as the chorus kicks in: "Stand in line / Spend every dime / While there's time to buy."

"It doesn't have much of the wide-eyed mysticism of, say, the Winter Flowers or neofolk," Moore says, though the couple did bond at Cafe du Nord's long-running hootenanny Mondays, over mix tapes of girl-group pop and Bacharach rarities. "That has more of a hippie canyon, Incredible String Band sort of feeling, whereas our music is very urban and, I would say, more pop oriented. As opposed to running through the meadow, it's pissing in the alley." An alley located behind the Brill Building, I'm sure.

The duo began writing songs together two years ago, a process Moore says he enjoyed because he could finally find an outlet for his love of Springfield and Jackie DeShannon and put together tunes for a female voice. "They're upbeat songs with darker lyrics," Torrisi says. "But that's what the girl-group sound is. All these upbeat songs talking about how their heart is broken."

Driving ambition

Torrisi can relate to the trauma: she suffers from fibromyalgia, a chronic muscle condition that's made it painful to lift, drive, play the guitar and violin, which she's studied since she was seven, or do much else that requires arm movement (the 23-year-old is a music major at San Francisco State University, where Moore, 30, is working on a master's in history). When her "body freaked out," she moved back to the Vacaville home of her jazz drummer father (a former priest – a "jazz-uit," Moore quips – who occasionally performed with Vince Guaraldi and started the band program at St. Ignatius school in San Francisco) and her pianist mother (an ex-nun who, like her husband, Torrisi is quick to add, left her order before they met).

"She cannot use her arms," Moore teases in a faux announcer's voice before singing Summerland's opening lines, "You take me and you break me!"

"That's why I drive with my knees," Torrisi explains.

Which is why Moore obtained a driving permit for their recent tour. "I grew up in L.A. I just had a bike. And I think my dad drove real fast, and I was just scared of the speed," the singer-songwriter explains. "My mom says I have a Peter Pan complex, and driving just feels, like, adultish. Adulty. Never want to commit ... adultery," he deadpans.

Yet although the couple are splitsville, the harmony doesn't have to end. Music is still Torrisi and Moore's bond, and we settle down to watch their new New Orleans pal, Rose, plinking at his piano – they're hoping to bring the forgotten songwriter to town soon.

"The next album was going to be called The Breakup or Born Just to Die," Moore notes. "Biff said, 'Why don't you change it to Born to Change Colors and Die?" So it should be. But you hope the pair don't ever change their edgeless edge.

Nedelle and Thom play a CD-release show with Bart Davenport Sat/4, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $6. (415) 923-0923.