by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"My parents were really strict, so I usually had to sneak out to go to shows," says Vivian Sarratt, half of New York City's "electropunk power couple" Mommy and Daddy. Despite Sarratt's teenage fetters, her authoritarian parents also laid the foundation for her career in rock - she says her Vietnamese mother typifies the Asian tendency to push kids into music as well as academic studies. "It's her fault I'm not a doctor!"

Sarratt and Edmond Hallas met in a Virginia university's philosophy class in 1998, got married and moved to New York City around 2000. After wasting time in a series of dead-end bands, the couple launched Mommy and Daddy in 2002, packing their voices, bass, synths, beats and love into muscular pop packages. Their sophomore EP Fighting Style Killer Panda has scored high with critics since its release in March, but their live shows have likely won them the most fans. Sarratt and Hallas whirl and stomp around the stage, passing the mic and the bass - she works the melodies with her rich alto, he spews punk venom and sweats profusely over keyboards. From Hoboken, New Jersey to Nottingham, U.K., audiences have basked in their giddy aggression, and the Brits have responded in kind.

"People tend to go more nuts in the U.K. than they do here," says Sarratt. "We also get way more royalty cheques from overseas."

In 2003, the U.K.'s Big Cat Records released Mommy and Daddy's Live How You Listen, an album the duo intends to re-record and reissue via New York labels Kanine (who put out their EPs) and Fontana, in conjunction with Universal distribution. Kanine? Big Cat? If you were wondering, Sarratt and Hallas are cat people, and their kitty inspired their moniker.

"[The cat] was being really loud and obnoxious one day and we said, ‘Be quiet, mommy and daddy are practicing.' We notice our friends saying stuff like ‘Leave mommy alone' to their cats. In New York, a lot of people just don't have kids 'cause living here is so ridiculously expensive, so we're really attached to our pets."

With Eyes Like Knives at El Salon on Sunday, May 15, 9 p.m., $8

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