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Sigur Ros show Sigur Rós with the Amina string quartet » Where: Hawaii Theatre » When: 8 p.m. Aug. 9 » Tickets: $27.50 » Call: 528-0506 or go online at www.hawaiitheatre.com

It's the rare occasion that the cooler climes of Iceland figure into our balmy, tropical weather, but that's what we can expect next Tuesday as a critically and internationally acclaimed band from Reykjavik plays in the historical confines of Hawaii Theatre.

Sigur Rós comes to town with much-anticipated expectations on their collective shoulders. Four years following their international debut, the band and accompanying string section toured Europe after a two-year absence with great success. That has followed them during their just-completed travels through Japan and Australia, and their one-off Hawaii concert will be their final stop before heading back home to Iceland, an island continent located just below the Arctic Circle and known for its spectacular and stark natural landscapes of glaciers and dormant volcanoes.

It's there that they'll begin doing videos for three of the songs off their new album "takk ..." (thanks) that will be released Sept. 12, about a week later than the start of an extensive North America promotional tour. (Presale tickets to all of their American shows are already sold out.)

Outside of their global group of dedicated fans, the only exposure most people have gotten of Sigur Rós' majestic and ethereal music is from the soundtrack of the movie "Vanilla Sky." The band's otherworldly breakout hit, "Svefn-g-englar," was one of the featured songs on the soundtrack, and keyboardist-guitarist Kjartan (pronounce CASS-tin) Sveinsson promises it'll be played in their stage show, one that features evocative images and film projected on a screen placed in front of the band at times, as well as stark, evocative lighting.

Quietly speaking from his Frankfurt, Germany hotel room by phone one morning during their European tour, Sveinsson said the band is looking forward to playing the historical Hawaii Theatre and taking in bit of scuba diving during their down time.

While Sigur Rós has made its reputation for its pure, elemental music sung in "Hopelandic," a phonetic tongue created by vocalist-guitarist Jón Pór Birgisson, Sveinsson said that the new songs on "takk ..." will be sung in Icelandic, more focused and, believe it or not, more "rock 'n' roll."

"It's definitely different for us," he said. "The last album (2002's '( )') was a bit heavy and melancholic. And while there's a bit more guitar on this album, they aren't your typical guitar riffs." (Two songs from the upcoming album, "Gong" and "Milano," have been part of the band's concert setlist on this tour.)

On the band's Web site, "eighteen seconds before sunrise," Birgisson told the British music magazine New Music Express that the new album is "a bit more happy, with a bit more hope in it. The lyrics are small adventures, maybe like children's stories or something. I think the songs are quite simple and naïve and they have a central character to them. There's one called Glósóli, and he wakes up and everything is dark outside and he can't see any light. He thinks that the sun is gone and somebody has taken it from the sky, so he makes a journey to look for the sun. He finds it in the end."

WHEN SVEINSSON joined the band around 1999 (Sigur Rós celebrated its 11th anniversary in January), that's when its music coalesced. "It got more structured, and I think I brought in some discipline as well to the music," he said.

Named in part after the sister of one of the bandmates (loosely translated as "Victory Rose"), the core of the then-teenaged Birgisson and bassist Georg Hólm gigged around Iceland and released two albums before Sveinsson joined. Utilizing his keyboard skills and the use of a full orchestra, the album "gætis Byrjun" ("Good Start") was Sigur Rós' first release outside Iceland, where it became a hit in the United Kingdom, buoyed by the haunting track "Svefn-g-englar."

Early 2000 was the band's breakout year, where they opened for Radiohead on their European tour later that year. There was also a small U.S. tour opening for fellow countryman Björk to help promote the domestic release of "gætis Byrjun."

After the release of "( )" in '02, the band followed it up with the EP "ba ba ti ki di do" the next year, and then little else until this year.

The band did write and record a song for the Royal Danish Ballet's re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" that was performed in Copenhagen in April in honor of his 200th birthday.

"It all happened slowly," Sveinsson said. "We were kind of surprised at how well America responded to our music."

When asked to describe his homeland, he said "it's a volcanic island like yours, and a lot bigger. There's lots of landscapes, moss growing everywhere, almost no trees, but plenty of fresh air. The beauty of the horizon, which is kind of big.

"It's easy to be taken in by the environment, but it's not just that, but the people as well. It's a very young country, and the people's way of thinking is different from anywhere else, more spontaneous. We've only been independent for 60 years now."

Expect that kind of fertile imagination to be expressed in full glorious effect come Tuesday night.