The young Danish group Ave have no real history and from my US perspective they are shrouded in mysterious, exoticized cultural misconceptions about anti-Muslim cartoons, German unification, and Hamlet.

Without a reputation, the band humbly offers a new EP called Follow Your Saint. The record contains six tracks of richly textured, complex, almost difficult guitar pop often broken-up into barren stretches of slinking beats and Thom Yorke vocals.

Apparently Ave are not concerned about the unpopularity of religious blatant iconography in American independent music. Luckily for them, the record is good enough—strange enough—that the Christian rock tag would not stick. Don't expect Ave and Reliant K to announce a joint world tour anytime soon.

This band sounds like a slowly drowning classical ensemble, posthumously covered by a precious little indie-pop outfit, and then resurrected ninety years later by trip-hop band Portishead. The generally careful, even timid instrumentation is redeemed by aggressive syncopation and really stunning vocals.

I find Follow Your Saint to be more cathartic, more emotionally charged, and less tongue-and-cheek than Architecture in Helsinki or Belle and Sebastian. If Sigur Ros wrote an album in a Manhattan storm while going through the final stages of drug rehabilitation for opium, it might sound something like Ave.

With a proclivity for period garb from 1930s jazz clubs and an insistence that 2007 will bring them critical acclaim through American college radio, Ave cries out to be heard in a music business generally hostile to diversity, let alone anachronism.