Arcade Fire Touring U.S.

Montreal indie-pop sextet the Arcade Fire are taking their unique sound -- twinkling piano-and-string-driven ballads suffused with childlike whimsy -- on a tour of the States through mid-December. Although four of the band's family members died during the recording of their debut record, Arcade managed to make Funeral one of the most exuberant rock albums of the year.

"Unless I'm faced with death, there's a lot of things that I don't have the courage to look at or think about or take seriously," says lead singer Win Butler, 24, who lost his grandfather, famed pedal steel guitarist Alvino Rey, last summer.

In 2002, Butler, a Texas native, moved to Montreal to attend McGill University, when he saw classmate Regine Chassagne, 28, singing jazz at an art opening and persuaded her to join forces. "The stuff I was writing really shifted," says Butler, who counts the Pixies and Radiohead among his influences. "Regine was into really obscure medieval music and classical stuff -- way more orchestral. Her approach just threw a curveball into it, and what we ended up with was a lot weirder and more interesting." (Songs aren't the only things the pair has collaborated on -- they wed in August 2003.)

Butler lends his man-child tremolo to vignettes inspired, he says, by everything from natural disasters to childhood friendships. Chassagne, for her part, sings on the tracks "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" and the bittersweet "Haiti" with a girlish, French-inflected voice, and provides accordion, recorder and xylophone flourishes that give the album a vaudevillian charm.

In October, Arcade Fire played a much-coveted headlining slot at New York's indie rock festival, the CMJ Music Marathon, and the band is already working on new songs at their makeshift studio in Butler's parents' barn in Maine. But for now, artistry comes second to the harsh reality of a Montreal winter. "I just spent an hour chopping wood," Butler says. "I'm not thinking of the music industry so much right now."