If Una De Luna sounds chilly and haunting, it's because the band originally formed to cut a track for an independent horror movie called "Carmilla's Kiss."

In fact, the deal was an even exchange of music for immortality.

"Our friend Angelo Bruni, who is a vampire, was the star of this flick," says Peter Guellard. "He promised to drink our blood and give us eternal life if we gave them the song called 'Dinner Du Jour' for the opening sequence. We kept our end of the deal. But ..."

Una De Luna united singer Marla Degenhardt (ex Cat Ballou and Electra Loves Daddy) with guitarist-keyboardist-producer Peter Guellard, who came to Pittsburgh from Poland in 1991 and fronted the local industrial band Mace, later touring nationally as keyboardist for the Electric Hellfire Club. He now works as a sound engineer at The Church Recording Studio in Overbrook.

"Long before the band existed I was producing Marla's solo tracks, which had this down-tempo, trance-ish character to it," he says. "Eventually it became obvious that her writing and my producing just clicked. Marla's musical interests span from ethereal pop through '60s groove and her bizarre love for surf music meshed quite strangely with my world of electronica, goth and industrial."

They intended to just make it a studio project, but for the movie release, filmmaker Michael McGovern asked them to assemble a live band, fleshed out by old Mace cohorts drummer A.T. Vish (also ex Thickhead Grin and Lowsunday) and bassist Mark Urbano, who, Guellard says, "wanted in on the eternal life thing."

Una De Luna's debut, "Controversy," is exotic blend of atmospheric rock, electronica and Indian music with guitars, sitar and tabla. The sound has been compared to "Portishead meets Garbage meets P.J.Harvey" and "Nine Inch Nails on qualudes."

"My adventure with Indian sounding music started when I met Jim DiSpirito of Rusted Root," Guellard says. "I was fascinated with the sound of his tablas. Later, while working on Michael Glabicki's solo album as sound engineer I was further inspired by Jim's takes and I asked him to play on the track 'Traveler.' Then I wanted to take it a little further and started to think how to incorporate other Indian instruments, which all sound very mystical to me."

Not only did Guellard not know how to play a sitar, he had never even touched one before. He stumbled upon a "sitar for sale" ad on Craiglist.

"A day later I was a proud owner of a semi-pro instrument. Then I started to Google. I came upon sitar classes and various articles on how to tune it. Yes, tuning a sitar is an art of its own. Being a guitar player, adjusting to playing a sitar was quite painless, except for proper sitting position ... if you never tried yoga, you will hate it. We used sitar on the song 'Lotus,' which was written last and in 100 percent inspired by this instrument. Right now I am still learning how to play it and will continue to learn for God knows how long."

If the vampire bargain works out, it could be a very, very long time.