The soundtrack album for the second Twilight movie New Moon has been a top-secret project for months. Until now that is. "Meet Me On the Equinox" -- the first soundtrack single by emo rockers Death Cab For Cutie -- will debut this Sunday night on MTV's website during its Video Music Awards telecast.

Death Cab For Cutie wrote and recorded "Meet Me on the Equinox" specifically for the sequel, which stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and a newly buff (and often shirtless) Taylor Lautner. In New Moon, Bella (Stewart) is in the throes of a deep depression after her vampire soul mate, Edward (Pattinson), leaves her. She seeks comfort in her new friend Jacob (Lautner), who's also a werewolf, as she struggles with her newly broken heart. DCFC bassist Nick Harmer told MTV News that the band's lyrics -- penned mostly by frontman Ben Gibbard -- often tread this kind of bumpy emotional landscape.

Says Harmer, "If you strip away all the vampirism and the werewolves and the Northwest and everything, basically, the Twilight series is just a big romance novel. It's a big story about love, and that's a major theme for us." It's a theme that, if you look at some of their song titles, they know pretty well:

"Your Heart Is an Empty Room"
"You Can Do Better Than Me"
"The Sound of Settling"
"I Will Follow You Into the Dark"
"I Will Possess Your Heart"

One song, "Your New Twin Sized Bed," off their most recent album Narrow Stairs, tells the story of someone so unlucky in love that they completely give up, toss their queen-sized bed into an alley, and buy a smaller twin-sized mattress instead. On the bed lying in the alley they place a note that says, "I hope you have more luck with this than me." So when it comes to love and all its bruising and questions -- a major theme in New Moon -- these guys should have the lead single on the soundtrack to what will undoubtedly be the most emo film of 2009. (Sorry, Time Traveler's Wife!)

Harmer told MTV News that geography also connects DCFC -- who are from Bellingham, WA -- with the Twilight saga. He says, "Here's a wildly popular book series about vampires...set in the Northwest, and we happen to be from the Northwest as well, so there's this sort of hometown pride kind of thing going on. I'm kind of happy that Stephenie Meyer put Forks, Washington, on the map for the entire globe." The peninsula setting of Forks in the Twilight series is about a four-and-a-half hour drive from Bellingham.

This is the first time that DCFC has created a song specifically for a movie. Without knowing if "Meet Me on the Equinox" would make it into the film, the band spent a week in Los Angeles writing and recording the track, which they then submitted for a possible slot on the soundtrack. Even though the band was offered to see a five-hour cut of New Moon (without music or effects), they couldn't coordinate it with their schedule and instead only saw the trailer.

But at least two of the band's members are actually fans of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books. Both guitarist-producer Chris Walla and bassist Harmer have read the first two -- Twilight and New Moon -- and Walla is starting on the third, Eclipse. In a statement, Harmer said they wanted the lyrically dark, yet up-tempo song to "capture that desperate feeling of endings and beginnings that so strongly affect the main characters."

There's been a flurry of speculation for months about who will land a slot on this highly anticipated album. Death Cab For Cutie is the only officially confirmed band so far. According to Billboard magazine, sources in the music industry say that New Moon's collection will be more "indie-centric" than 2008's Twilight soundtrack. Rumored to show up on the New Moon album are Kings of Leon, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, and Stephenie Meyer's favorite band, Muse.

The soundtrack is being put together by Alexandra Patsavas, the influential music supervisor responsible for breaking artists on popular TV shows like The O.C., Grey's Anatomy and Gossip Girl.

Patsavas also supervised the enormously successful Twilight soundtrack, which debuted last November at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and included songs from Paramore, Collective Soul, Mutemath, Perry Farrell and Linkin Park. Even Edward Cullen himself -- billed as Rob Pattinson -- recorded a Nick Drake-ish acoustic track for the album called "Never Think." According to Nielsen SoundScan, the Twilight album has sold over two million copies. It also had the longest top ten chart run for a theatrical film soundtrack -- 20 weeks -- since Titanic (1997) and City of Angels (1998).

A music video for "Meet Me on the Equinox" was shot last week in Toronto. Even though the band hoped a few cast members from New Moon would join the shoot, it's not known whether any did. A clip of the song can currently be heard in some of MTV's on-air promos for Sunday night's Video Music Awards. The full version of "Meet Me on the Equinox" will debut that night on MTV's website during the awards telecast where Stewart, Pattinson and Lautner will present an exclusive, expanded trailer for New Moon with fresh unseen footage.

The soundtrack drops on Tue., Oct. 20, New Moon hits theaters on Fri., Nov. 20.