Tonight at Radford University , the Baltimore-based band Boister will be in town to do an unusual thing for a band: they’ll be performing an original score alongside Buster Keaton’s 1928 silent film classic, “Steamboat Bill, Jr.”

So what kind of band goes around playing regular shows and also performs original silent film scores?

Image courtesy Boister

A band that’s huge in France, is getting regular play on NPR and has just released a new double album called “Sister City” to rave reviews, to name but a few of the many good things going for the band these days.

Boister’s Anne Watts (vocals, accordion, keyboards) takes a few moments here to talk about being a musician and loving Buster Keaton.

Do you write specifically for film, or do you write what you’re feeling and then find that some of what you’ve written ends up working for film?

Anne Watts: Both really. I write a lot independently of the whole film thing. I just write music to make sense of the world. It just so happens that watching Keaton is so evocative.

He’s so kinetic, and he’s so expressive with his body, but also with his face — his face is famous for having this stony look all the time, but his eyes are like wells — they’re so deep, it’s like an animal.

An animal is not really that interesting until you get up close and look at its eyes. And he’s like that. And he’s got the other thing going too, which is that he moves like an acrobat. So for me, writing film scores for him is easy because there’s just these layers of possibility.

How did the group evolve into its current form, performing regular gigs and also composing and performing scores alongside silent films?

AW: It’s all a series of happy accidents, and I’m not very good at planning what’s gonna happen to me.

If you work at what you care about hard enough, people come to you. It’s not about reaching out to them. And that’s how the film thing happened. I was just chugging along in the Baltimore arts scene — 5, 10, 15, 20 years, grinding away — but in a happy way, just feeling grateful that I could play music, and that there were cool people to work with. And some of the guys that I play with now, I’ve been playing with almost that whole duration of time.

Are you still living in Baltimore?

AW: Now I live in the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the outskirts on the Chesapeake Bay .

That’s a great area.

AW: Yeah it’s awesome, because there’s nothing happening. … I spent the morning having breakfast … and watching these guys in their 90s coming in and having breakfast.

People are just outrageous looking … it’s amazing that people are just scratching out an existence, but they’ve been doing it this way their entire lives. … I don’t know about you, but I find that a thousand times more inspiring than listening to music.

I love to listen to music, but generally I need the visuals.

How did the score for the upcoming show at Radford come about?

AW: A friend of mine got a gig working at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore , which is a really reputable institution. And she asked me to write a score for a Keaton film.

She was gonna do this film series at the museum and ask three different local composers. And then the funding fell apart for it, and I was halfway done.

So I decided to finish it, and it took me a really long time. And that’s the one we’re doing at Radford.

That one was meticulously done. It’s a little more relaxed now. I’ll ask my band mates now to take a copy of the film home and work on it, so it’s more collaborative now. … But it takes so much precision and concentration. I still watch a Keaton film I’ve seen a hundred times, and see new stuff. I’ll tear up or laugh hysterically.

That happens to all of us — we all still bug out watching Keaton, and we’re not interested in any of the other cats from the silent film era.

What can you tell me about your new album, “ Sister City ”?

AW: We can’t help it: it’s got political undertones that our earlier work just doesn’t have. As much as I try to keep my animosity towards the administration to myself — I try to keep it out of my house, I try to keep it out of my daily activity — it seeps into the music.

So there’s an edge there that I don’t think was in our earlier work. … “ Sister City ” is a reference to Baltimore , it’s a reference to Fallujah, it’s a reference to the decline of the urban landscape across the country and on the other side of the world where we’re just reeking havoc.

I just decided to let it come on in, and I’m really, really happy to say that this record’s been out for a month, and it’s already by far had a very strong response.

NPR has already played three songs on Morning Edition. We just played a couple of standing-room-only CD release parties. I was feeling really stressed about it and somebody said to me, “It helps me because I feel like I’m not crazy… I’m not alone.” … And there’s been a lot of loss.

Our videographer died, and a couple of old friends, and a couple of us lost our fathers. So that gets onto the tape too, struggling with issues of mortality.

I’ve always been really interested in that — I’m much more inclined to write a song about death than I am to write a love song.

Yeah, I’ve always felt that you have to write about what’s messing with you, and whatever’s making you happy doesn’t necessarily demand your emotional energies in the same way.

AW: For me, if I didn’t write I’d be really screwed to the wall — I don’t know how else to make sense of things.

Boister will perform the original score to “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” to a screening of the film Thursday at Radford University , at 7 p.m. in the Pridemore Playhouse.