“She’s my shelter from the storm/ She’s a place to rest my head/ Late at night she keeps me safe and warm/ I call her red …”

There once was a time when this little ditty was all we knew about Jared Leto’s musical abilities. As his character Jordan Catalano sang this heart-felt song, later found to be about his Mustang, on the now canceled television show “My So-Called Life” years ago, teen-age girls buckled and swooned at the site of him strumming a guitar in a dimly-lit practice space. Little did they know that they were witnessing the hint of great things to come.

Now a successful film star, Leto has branched out the way many celebrities do, by forming his own band, Thirty Seconds To Mars.

The first noticeable difference between his band and other celebrity-fronted bands, is that his actually is good.

“Welcome To The Universe” is a musical masterpiece shrouded in secrecy. Establishing a futuristic army motif, the band struggles to conceal the fact that its lead singer is a dreamboat, and the drummer is his brother (Shannon Leto). Judging by fan postings on its official Web site, www.thirtysecondstomars.com, it’s entirely uncool to like the band purely for its noteworthy members, and the band itself goes along with this idea.

An interesting mix of live instruments layered over synthesized landscapes, the overall feel of the music is literally that of another world.

“Capricorn,” scheduled to be the first single off the album, expertly showcases the range of Leto’s vocals. The deep drums and resonating guitar within the track produce an unforgettable hypnotic feeling.

Upon first listen of the available 10-song sampler, an untrained ear may dismiss the songs as being “just like everything else.” To be quite honest, this was my first reaction. The space-age computer rhythms mixed with honey-toned lyrics sounded like any number of bands that currently are being played on MTV or college radio stations.

Keep listening.

As the “super fans” on the band’s Web site will tell you, there’s something to these songs that will get under your skin, for no other reason than that they sound cool, and never stop sounding cool.

“Echelon,” hands-down the best song off the CD, is the track that I predict will be the one the girls scream for during live shows. Leto begins the song with hushed vocals over a booming drum beat, and then guides the melody to a faster pace and back again. Even though the song probably is about his long-time girlfriend Cameron Diaz, we’ll pretend we don’t care.

If you’re bored with all your favorite CDs, and have some time to root around the Internet , even in its bootlegged, unpolished form, “Welcome To The Universe” will prove to be a nice surprise. It’s available on various channels of music downloading sites online.

The album is set for release June 18 on Immortal Records, which is a division of Virgin Records.