By Kimberly Chun

photo by carl abrahamsson Nordic track: Native-tongue lyrics and hell-raising psychedelia set Dungen apart from other Swedish invaders.

But then along come Sweden's Dungen, who take that fine enunciation and set it loose, frolicking in a Wild Strawberries idyll. (Just picture Bibi Andersson undulating with flowers in her hair.) Despite the roller-coaster beauty of Dungen's hell-raising psychedelia, echo-chamber prog rock, well-etched folk pop, and reined-in free-jazz spaz-outs on Ta Det Lugnt (Kemado), the group won't find themselves on the toppermost of a poppermost when their new disc is released Aug. 2, because they sing in – yikes – their native tongue.

Old hat for those accustomed to being led down the garden path of non-English vocals by sexy samba-tistas, bossa nova sophisticates, palm wine music tipplers, Tuvan nomads, and Bulgarian warblers, but that's how Dungen distinguish themselves from their English-only musical countryfolk. Never fear, though, language-phobe rockers – feel the joy, whimsy, and certain terror shimmering off multi-instrumentalist mastermind Gustav Ejstes's incomprehensible vocals. Amid the fiddles, drums, guitars, organs, and flutes (almost all played by Ejstes with a certain Jimi Hendrix Experience-like thunder) Ta Det Lugnt becomes a refined fun house mirror that levitates above language barriers, a feat that led NME to dub them "comfortably the best band in the world."

Yet roll back those jams, and you get words that are just as compelling as Ejstes's music.

Their third album's overture, "Panda" – a musical mutation of Steppenwolf and the Strokes, delivered with MC5-y drama – is actually "about a girl that you are hopelessly in love with, and you don't get any response," Ejstes explains over the phone from Sweden. "It could also be about a group of Swedish indie pop music fans they call pandas because they have white makeup and black hair. They used to be a group of people that I didn't think so much about, then some of them told me that they hated everything that I did. So we had ... to break up. Me and the pandas were breaking up. That's what the song is all about. It's a kind of love story – when you have to break up with someone that you never even had a relationship with."

Enjoying that day's sweet Swedish summer by cutting the grass and planning a barbecue, the ebullient Ejstes, 25, proves to be a man of many surprises. He occasionally stumbles over his serviceable English – the main reason he gives for not singing in the international language of Freedom Fries – and tells me about his hip-hop roots.

His first record purchase: Public Enemy's "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," natch. "For an 11-year-old in the south of Sweden in a small village, that was something that you definitely never heard before," he recalls, "and I think I felt like many people in the US feel when they hear my music now – they don't understand a shit."

He dismisses the MC5 comparisons ("I have never listened to them") and instead praises the reissued demos of New Zealand guitarist Jesse Harper ("It's the same as me, doing a lot of the instruments himself") and Swedish folk music.

He moved from making the beats for hip-hop instrumentals to rock because "the drumming was never going on, and it was just looping, and I was sick and tired of that. I wanted to go into something that was changing, something more organic." He bought a drum kit, met up with the rest of Dungen (pronounced doon-yen and named after the family home of a friend); the band currently includes guitarist Reine Fiske, bassist Mattias Gustavsson, and drummer Fredrik Bjorling. A deal with Virgin Records and a subsequent tune, "Jag Vill Va Som Du," on the soundtrack to the Swedish Jungle Book in 2003 came about because, Ejstes merrily allows, "We were depressed, pissed off, stoned, and drunk, and we needed a lot of money."

After being dropped from the label, Ejstes hid out on his mother's farm and patched together Ta Det Lugnt, playing nearly everything apart from lead guitar, which was contributed by Fiske. Since then Ejstes has fiercely maintained his independence while mildly complaining about the lack of critical, financial, and promotional support Dungen get from the Swedish musical community.

"They don't do shit for me, and I don't know why," he says before offering a few ideas. "In the '70s we had music political movements and left-wing music. I sing in Swedish, and I have psychedelic influences, and that's something Swedes hate. It's tired men in their late 40s who were into punk rock – they hate my music."

Singing in your native European tongue as a political act – I thought that only counted as a political gesture in France. "I sing in Swedish, and I sing about life in an honest way," Ejstes maintains, "and I'm not pretending to be like I'm from Liverpool or Seattle. Just being honest, and that's something that Swedes have a problem with."

Swedish psychedelia, more than 40 years after it hit like waves of color-coded hallucinations around the world the first time around, and far from the madding crowd, in Ejstes's portable studio: Love it ("grab the calm," as Ta Det Lugnt translates to) or leave it. "I think [listeners] should just grab the calm, man, and listen," Ejstes says, "and if they like what they hear, they can do whatever they want to. If you don't like, then turn the record off and throw it."

Dungen play with Faun Fables and the Lonelyhearts Fri/8, 4 and 10 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $12. (415) 474-0365.