Sam Endicott, singer/guitarist of the Bravery, couldn't help but chuckle when asked how the band's music might evolve on the heels of the group's newly released CD, "The Sun and the Moon."

This moment marked the return of a question he'd obviously been asked incessantly in interviews to promote the Bravery's 2005 self-titled CD.

"I remember with the last record, like the day it came out, people being like, 'So what's the next record going to sound like?' " Endicott remarked in a recent phone interview. "So I was waiting for that."

"After doing this record I feel like we have no limits on what we can do, like we're not categorized into a certain sound or a certain style of songs," he said. "That is very freeing to me."

As Endicott's answer suggests, "The Sun and the Moon" opens up many new possibilities for how the band's music will evolve in the near future.

After a debut CD whose dancy synthesizer-laced pop had created many comparisons of the Bravery -- which is performing Friday at the McKay Events Center as opener to the Smashing Pumpkins -- to the Killers, Franz Ferdinand and synth-pop groups of an earlier vintage, such as Depeche Mode and New Order, "The Sun and the Moon" makes the Bravery harder to pigeonhole.

For one thing, the dance beats that so characterized the first CD are employed far more sparingly on the new album.

"We didn't want to just do the exact same thing again," Endicott said. "When we made the first album it was intentionally, every song, we intentionally made every song like a dance party, super high energy, really dancy. We wanted it to be like that. With this one it was like we have all these different sides that we haven't explored a lot yet, so whatever comes out, we're just going to roll with it. We're not going to limit ourselves."

There are promising signs for "The Sun and the Moon" as the single, "Time Won't Let Me Go," was recently the most added single at modern rock radio, climbing quickly into the top 30. With the band now beginning a run of American tour dates, the Bravery is poised to build on that early momentum.

The sonic experimentation of the two albums creates some challenges when it comes to how to present the songs live, said Endicott, who noted the current live set is equally split with songs from the two CDs. But he said the band doesn't get too caught up in the sonic details.

"We look at recording and live as two different media," Endicott said. "And the songs, we actually play them pretty differently live. In the studio, it's more about subtlety and layering. Our stuff is definitely fun to listen to on headphones. The more you hear it, the more things you pick out. On multiple listenings you hear a lot of stuff that you don't hear the first time. But live, we sacrifice some of that in return for just energy, like pure energy."