Canadian band Suuns sets in the East

Suuns play everything. The hipster-tastic Montreal four-piece, who will perform at Hidden Agenda this month, have been likened to everyone from The Velvet Underground to Radiohead - their music categorised as everything from psychedelic to prog to krautrock to industrial to post-punk to electronic.

"I think all those terms describe it pretty well," says Suuns (pronounced "soons") drummer Liam O'Neill. "The band's sound is pretty eclectic, but I like to think about it like different gears of a larger, musically conceptual car."

Suuns' music doesn't give the listener anything too obvious to grab onto; it requires your attention, and then hooks you without you realising.

The music runs a wide gamut but is always underlaid with a gritty low-end throb. Traditional rock instrumentation is spliced with a distinctly non-rock approach to composition, with constant tangents - both sonic and structural - which, as O'Neill says, push the band into some surprising territory.

"There's some plasticity to the band's identity, which I think will ultimately give us longevity," he says.

The band's name is a whimsically pluralised version of the Thai word for "zero" (Suuns were previously called Zeroes, but decided to change it as other artists have had similar names). The name lived on, however, in the title of its experimental first album Zeroes QC in 2010.

In years between that album and this year's Images Du Futur the band's sound has become more focused, adding a streamlined intensity to their eclecticism.

"We're older now, more seasoned, and we play with more intention and restraint," says O'Neill. "We also have an audience now, so that forces us to cut the fat, so to speak."

Another more distinct feature on Images Du Futur is singer Ben Shemie's voice - reminiscent of Radiohead's Thom Yorke and sometimes Ian Brown from The Stone Roses.

Where Shemie murmured his way through Zeroes QC, his angsty, vaguely emo lyrics are more audible. "That just happens after you play 300-plus shows," says O'Neill. "You realise you have to articulate clearly in order to reach your fans."

Those fans will get to see Suuns in Asia for the first time as part of the band's tour, a grand four-month sweep with more than 30 dates from Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan to the United States and back to Europe again.

As a band whose sound was forged live, says O'Neill, such a lengthy tour comes with both pluses and minuses. On the positive side, the songs get a chance to evolve.

The trade-off, however, is that all that touring doesn't leave much time for songwriting. The drummer adds that the band are excited about visiting Asia - and seeing its reaction.

"Europeans seem to have noticed our music much more than North Americans. It's strange: playing on home soil, we feel more like strangers than we sometimes do across the Atlantic," he says of the varying responses they get - which sometimes includes the less than ideal.

"We just played on a beach in Ravenna, Italy, and our van got stuck in the sand so we slept on the beach," says O'Neill. "Someone robbed us as we slept, but we're going swimming anyway."

48hours@scmp.com

Suuns, Hidden Agenda, 2A Wing Fu Building, 15-17 Tai Yip Street, Kwun Tong, August 23, 8pm; HK$280 (advance), HK$320 (door). Inquiries: 2591 0499