Visuals accent Saint Motel sounds

The Los Angeles-based band Saint Motel is probably best known for glossy, danceable pop songs such as the irresistibly snarky “My Type” or the propulsive “Move.”

And that’s just fine with singer-songwriter A.J. Jackson, Jr.

“I'm super happy that those resonated. And that we even have a 'sound,' which is a cool, unintentional byproduct of being around for this long,” Jackson said, speaking by phone from Atlanta, where the band was preparing for a recent performance.

Still, he’s confident that the group that has been together since 2007 — and which will appear Tuesday at Newport Music Hall — has more to offer.

“A lot of people know us from a handful of songs, but we have a pretty varied sound,” Jackson said. “We have down-tempo, emotional songs. We have some more kind of rock songs. I think it's all over the place.”

Underneath the slick surface, this is a band with big ideas and a willingness to experiment. Jackson and guitarist Aaron Sharp met while attending film school at Chapman University in Orange, California. They brought a mutual love of film into the band, which also includes bass player Dak Lerdamornpong and drummer Greg Erwin.

Their latest venture, released in October, is an EP called “The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Part 1.” (Part 2 is likely to be released in a few weeks, Jackson said, and Part 3 later in the year.)

Not that there's a movie to go with the soundtrack.

“It was important initially that this was a soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist,” Jackson said. “Now, as the music is coming out, it feels more like the movie is being created after the soundtrack. By the end of it, there actually might be something.”

The five songs of Part 1 have what the band calls “visualizers,” which can be viewed on Youtube.

“We wanted to do something that wasn't a music video but feels cinematic and is unique to each song,” Jackson said.

Each of the five visualizers features two or three dancers, performing anything from

ballet to modern dance to a country hoedown, with lighting and backdrops that transition during the course of the videos from deep blue through purple into a purplish red.

“We felt like it made sense to have a three-part structure,” Jackson said. “Part

1 has hope and optimism and is setting the scene for our story. It ends with this call to action, with the song 'Save Me.' Part 2 picks up that conflict and attempts a resolution. And then there's the climax at the end.”

This album isn't Saint Motel's first experimental recording. The band’s previous album, “saintmotelevision,” makes virtual reality and augmented reality experiences available for listeners for each of its songs.

The difference between the two reality experiences, Jackson says it, is that “if you're using a headset, and you're inside a world where you don't see the table in front of you, that's virtual reality. If you're using a phone or other device, and you see people dancing on the table that's actually in front of you, that's augmented reality.”

“It took us a long time to do it, and we released it as a free app. We had a lot of friends from film school who were getting into VR and wanted to do VR videos with us,” Jackson said. “No one had done a whole album with virtualreality experiences. Once we got there, we decided we might as well continue with the AR component. The technology was so new and exciting in that 2016, 2017 time frame. It was like the Wild West.”

As important as the visual elements are to Jackson, music comes first, he said. Before he went to film school, he was in bands in his hometown of Minneapolis.

“I always wanted to play music, but I didn't want to study music because I didn't want to ruin the mystery of where these songs came from. I wanted to do something creative and be around creative people, so film school was the perfect solution.”

Once he got there, he didn't wait around.

“I started trying to form a band like the first day of school. I was going around and asking people, and everyone said Aaron was the best guitarist on campus. So then I had to woo him,” Jackson said.

“I think he liked the songs I had. But then he was like, 'You know, we're going to have to rehearse and stuff.'”