The band Third Class doesn’t play by the usual rules.

The trio of Lee Boyle, Jack Boyle and Pepe Parish (joined by Robert Young on this project) has released CDs and vinyl in the past, but its last album was accompanied by a book, and its new album, “Ultrasonic Sonar Signals” is accompanied by a 50-minute movie.

It can be heard on all the major streaming services and the movie can be viewed on YouTube, but the only physical release is a run of 50 “galaxy green” cassettes that will be available for purchase (along with glow-in-the-dark alien T-shirts) at a listening party Saturday at Cedars West End.

The key word there is “listening.” The band won’t be playing Saturday. Lee Boyle said they’re inviting people to come listen to the music, watch the movie projected on the screen behind Cedars’ stage and help celebrate his 40th birthday.

The approach fits the tone of the album.

“This is more of a studio thing,” Boyle said. “We wanted to make a foray into showing movies, little parties and see if we can focus more on the studio. Our bread and butter is writing and recording, and I know of almost no band that can make a living on just that without playing shows, but I’d love to develop different types of events that are not just concerts and see where that takes us.”

There was no better place to try it than Cedars, especially for the visual element.

“I’ve been in Cedars countless times when there was an odd, low-budget movie playing in the background, and I kind of made this movie with that in mind,” Boyle said. “I’m going to make a movie that’s perfect for playing at Cedars.”

The movie always was a part of the concept, and the concept started with the title. They came up with the name “Ultrasonic Sonar Signals” and then began writing songs to match that mood.

The movie features an alien (or maybe just a guy in an alien mask and wearing something resembling a Hazmat suit) roaming aimlessly through a desolate, deserted industrial landscape. The film has a bright green tint to it, like a radar monitor in an old sci-fi movie or submarine film. That tint gives the clouds in the sky a toxic hue.

Considering the Boyles are from East Palestine, it’s hard not to think of the 2023 train derailment while watching it. That wasn’t the intent.

“Maybe just subconsciously,” Boyle said. “We’re in an area where there are a lot of industrial sites to see, and people who live by train tracks that I know, so I think it worked its way in in an abstract way. It’s a weird subject, being from East Palestine, the stuff that town is getting now because of the derailment, it needed anyway before the derailment.

“I think it spawned maybe the most positive abstraction it could spawn, where we’re admiring the industrial rust of Ohio and trying to turn it into our own planet. I guess it was an escapist version of that landscape. Us trying to make a fantasy world and flip it into some other place that’s not real, which is kind of a new thing for us, because I think we usually write about our childhood and this time we wrote about aliens and tried to be crazy and go into a fantasy world a little, not that it isn’t still rooted in Ohio. We tried to use a green paint brush on everything and see how it came out.”

The song most reminiscent of Third Class’ earlier work on “Ultrasonic” is “Kind of Living the Dream,” which is about the joy of making music with friends regardless of how much success it brings.

“I know a lot of people write about writing, but that one was a nice clear-cut shot of you start a band because you’re friends, and you stay friends because you’re in a band,” Boyle said. “It was nice to just write about that stuff, but in a way I acted like I was teleporting back to those times to put some sci-fi into it.

“Maybe this detail is unimportant, but the room we rehearse in has a bright green carpet, and I felt that was another jumping-off point for the theme as well, and I kept thinking about that carpet as I was writing the songs. It’s also a song about appreciating what you have. We are a small act in smalltown Ohio and we’re having a good time.”

“Kind of Living the Dream” is Boyle’s favorite of the songs he wrote, but his favorite overall is one his brother wrote, “Way Up Here.”

“That one is the antithesis of ‘Living the Dream,'” he said. “It’s probably the furthest we go in a new direction, our first step toward electronic music.”

It’s a direction he’d like to continue exploring.

“I would like it to be a future path. I’m not sure what way we’ll really go, but I’d love to go into that place a little. I would love to be more synthesizer-centric and let the guitar go a little more and just see where it takes us. It would be pretty fun to go that route and kind of circle back to influences that people said we sound like anyway, maybe take a crack at the synth wave thing.”