The Books are unique. Is that enough to intrigue you? That's debatable. Here's a newsflash: Most people are suspicious of uniqueness in music. Most people want familiar sounds arranged in familiar patterns. Most people want musicians to make songs with hummable choruses and guitar sounds and beats that remind them of other, older musicians. So maybe the Books are too distinctive for their own good.

But despite their uniqueness and habit of eluding easy categorization, the Books (guitarist Nick Zammuto and violinist Paul de Jong) have been increasing their fan base over their last two releases (they've issued three full-lengths altogether, all on Germany's Tomlab Records). The duo's new album, Lost and Safe, is their most accessible yet, but the overall vibe is more NPR than TRL.

The Books established themselves as an idiosyncratic presence in underground circles with 2002's Thought for Food. Like Matmos (whom the Books most closely resemble), the New York/Massachusetts pair are collagists extraordinaire fascinated with the sheer musicality of language and a fondness for juxtaposing quaint-signifying instruments (cello and banjo) with digital signal processing and stray vocal snippets. The Books allude to their methods on Thought for Food's "Read, Eat, Sleep," in which various voices repeat the word "aleatoric," a musical approach that favors chance and random processes over traditional compositional devices.

Essentially, Thought for Food is minimalist folktronica that's deceptively beautiful and subtly disorienting. From the start, the Books have been interested in subverting clichés, both linguistic and sonic. "Getting the Done Job" and "If Not Now, Whenever" hint that their linguistic skills match their musical ingenuity. You may detect the literary and sonic influences of McSweeney's and David Grubbs/Gastr Del Sol.

The Books' best album, The Lemon of Pink, is a disjointed yet mesmerizing indie-pop album animated by intricate arrangements and bizarre juxtapositions. Excerpts of people singing and speaking in numerous tongues dart in and out of a scrim of plangent acoustic guitars and banjos while wistful, dissonant violins and cellos cycle above warped psychedelia. Lemon irrefutably proves that original music still exists.

The Books' new disc, Lost and Safe, intensifies the group's word love, adding Zammuto's lilting Paul Simon/Ben Gibbard-like vocals to the panoply of found voices lifted from the duo's storehouse of esoteric recordings. The arrangements and tones are slightly more digestible than on past efforts, but Lost and Safe still tampers with expectations regarding songcraft and upsets folktronica conventions. The album's pleasures are abundant, but you have to work hard to apprehend them.

Sometimes it seems that the Books try too hard to be weird. Their methodical layering of oh-so-quirky elements can get annoying, even if it leads to unique-sounding music. Still, the Books' skewed ambitions deserve utmost respect. DAVE SEGAL

The Books play with Mia Doi Todd Fri May 13 at Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, 324-8000, 9 pm-2 am, $10, 21+.