Dan Boeckner has been shuffling from one mesmerizing musical project to the next from the quiet rumblings of Atlas Strategic and the raucous rock 'n' rollers Wolf Parade, through the Handsome Furs, The Divine Fits and now synth-fuelled party band The Operators. No two projects even remotely alike, but all pulled off to much success. Boeckner brings his crew to the Danforth Music Hall on Feb. 5 in a killer night of live music opening for The New Pornographers. We chatted with Boeckner ahead of the opening of the tour in support of the band’s first EP entitled, of course, EP1.

You have a few different projects, all doing great. Tell me about Operators and how it fits into your grand scheme?

I don’t think I have any grand scheme, maybe just to keep making original music, you know. I think Operators is a bit of an organic outgrowth of maybe how I’ve developed as a musician the last five or six years.

Compared to some of your early music, your work thus far with Operators is downright joyous. It’s party music. Was that part of the attraction that it's this style of music that just makes people move and have a good time, especially live?

Ya, absolutely. I mean especially around 2009 with the Furs, and more touring internationally, the different psycho-social economic background of audiences. We’d be playing a show in the Philippines, then flying to Eastern Europe in Poland, what connects people in live performance is definitely the ability to move around to the music. I'm over the chin-stroking thing. I just threw myself into it, too. And a lot of the audiences did not speak English, at least as a first language, so it was a way to connect emotionally without them necessarily catching all the lyrics.

For a lot of people who haven’t heard the band, it’s easy to throw out names such as Depeche Mode and that early New Wave era as a way to describe Operators, and I’ve read about your affection for New Order but are there more contemporary influences as well?

Definitely definitely. James Holden, for sure, he kind of came out of the UK underground trance scene in the early to mid 2000s. His album, The Idiots Are Winning, I loved. I felt like what he was doing was similar to what I was doing with Wolf Parade and indie rock, musically.

You wanted people to see the band first, before they heard the album. Why?

It’s the first record and I wanted to be able to come and play music and see how people reacted to it. At least for me, I don’t feel like songwriting exists in a vacuum, or there is this ivory tower of a dude in his bedroom — Pet Sounds, basically, the teenage symphony, sad lonely crazy guy. Sure, maybe that happens once every 20 years, but really good songwriting is road tested in front of humans.

Who else is in the band and how did you guys get together?

Sam Brown plays drums, he’s the drummer for New Bomb Turks and is in Divine Fits. I heard him at the first rehearsal for Divine Fits, and thought ‘holy crap that drummer is amazing.’ Sam does some songwriting as well, he's contributed songs, and he's got a great voice. Devojka is the synth, keyboard, drum machine player and she does all that stuff live.

There was some speculation in a past interview regarding a new project with you and Meredith from Perfect Pussy, has that progressed at all?

That’s going to depend on Meredith, she’s doing a solo record this year, wants me to play on it and write some stuff. I’m not sure what her timeline on that is. We’re pretty tight with Meredith just basically because we liked her band, and she happened to be in the studio in Montreal when we were recording. I did some soundtrack work with her when she was putting an early version of Perfect Pussy together. As soon as we met, everyone got along great.

You’re starting a tour now with The New Pornographers, and their new album is a no-holds-barred pop album as well, although not a synth-driven one. What can we expect from your show?

Oh, you know, dancing. I just saw them perform when I was doing a DJ set in Vancouver. I hadn’t seen them play in quite a while. I’m friends with Dan, met Carl once or twice, and their show was incredible. It was a master class in accurate live performance. Their vocal melodies are really complex, so it was pretty amazing to watch them just effortlessly do it live. I loved it, and I’m really looking forward to the shows. We’ll tenderize the crowd and they’ll go in and grill them.

Dan Boeckner’s The Operators will open for The New Pornographers on Feb. 5 at The Danforth Music Hall.